Scott, is it possible for someone with a mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia to come on a meditation course with you in Sri Lanka?
Yeah, for sure.
That's certainly possible.
I wouldn't stop such a person.
The one issue that I would have is whether the person has to take medication.
Because we have had people take, I've watched people taking anti-depression medication.
And medication in general is not advised during a meditation course.
whether it be medication for physical ailments or medication for mental ailments.
Now, if it's a physical ailment that requires medicine, for example, we have people who had
had some sort of condition.
Was it diabetes?
I can't remember.
No, it wasn't.
It was something horrible where they had to do dialysis treatment.
And so they had this portable dialysis machine.
And they came and did a meditation course and did dialysis every day.
It was crazy.
In that case it was actually no problem and they were able to finish the course while undergoing dialysis treatment.
But medication for the mind is certainly a problem.
And if it's to the point where you have to take some sort of antidepressant or antipsychotic or something, then we would have to discuss that.
I think in general we'd have a rule that people shouldn't take antipsychotic, antidepressant or whatever medications during the meditation course.
But otherwise, bipolar I think is really quite...
quite workable from our point of view.
Schizophrenia, I think it depends on the person.
If they're having psychotic ideations, like they want to kill people or so on, then it may be difficult.
But it's worth talking about it, and it's something that we'd have to discuss before the person came.