How should we relate to having animals as pets in an ideal spiritual society?

Question.. Should we, as spiritual people, keep and encourage the keeping of pets? I guess my point is that I can’t bear to keep fish or birds as I believe they should be free to swim and fly where they want, but I don’t feel that way about domestic animals like cats, dogs and rabbits. Yet should we even have these animals as pets if we were designing the ideal society?

Reply. A very interesting question. Perhaps it might be helpful to start with the ‘bigger picture’, and remind ourselves that all species of life on earth are part of one life and are therefore all linked up in one great web. Gurdjieff’s theory of the ‘Reciprocal Maintenance of Life’ propounds the notion that all of life exists to support all the rest of life, that is, plants grow to be food for certain animals whose droppings then fertilise other forms of life ,etc, etc. For example, we see this interlocking ecosystem operating well in rainforests. And then there is Lovelock’s ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ suggesting that our planet is an evolving, intelligent being, able to regulate its temperature and that all species of life on it constitute its intelligence and therefore all have a role to play in its evolution.

Basically, what all these theories tell us in a slightly different way is that ‘we are all in it’ together! And that doesn’t just mean us human beings but all species of life. So just as there ought not to be divisions separating those of us who belong to different races, nationalities, religions and cultures, so similarly, we human beings ought not to feel separate from the many other ‘kingdoms of life,’ including, in particular, the animal one. I personally think that human and animal evolution are particularly closely linked and that species such as lamas, camels, horses, cats and dogs, all of whom contribute enormously to our lives in many different ways, have probably chosen to align their evolution very strongly with ours. (If we look back over the centuries, man could not have survived without horses or camels!) There are benefits on the animals’ side as well. If those who look after them, do so in a good way, the animal will be comfortable and its evolutionary intelligence will probably also be boosted through human contact.

I never like the word ‘pet’. It always sounds belittling as if the pet is our little plaything, which sadly, is how many people relate to animals they possess, especially if they are small in size!

Thus I prefer the term friendship and I think we need to think in terms of creating bonds of friendship with animals, although of course this will manifest in a very different way to human friendship. I have a dog and I see her as my good buddy and I am her good buddy. We have a mutual understanding, respect and love for one another. I do my best to look after her and take care of her needs, and she, in her doggy way, reciprocates. I have friends who are very close to their horses and the same thing is also true.

The point is that animals are not lifeless, feelingless entities. They have souls and the more evolved species also possess feelings, so, just like us, they can, say, experience jealousy or feel neglected and are highly sensitive to how they are related to. Dogs and horses, for example, are terrific companions and their presence can hugely uplift us. Dogs, especially, can teach us a lot about loyalty and unconditional love.

I don’t think the issue is about whether an animal is kept in domestic surroundings or not, but how well it is treated, how much its ‘animal rights’ are respected.

So I am not against animals being kept in zoos, provided all efforts are made to allow them to ‘do their thing’ and to ensure that their creativity is not stifled. If the animal is given freedom to roam and has a sympathetic keeper looking after it, and is not kept locked up in a cage all day (equivalent to our being kept in prison), there is no reason to believe that such animals are unhappy. 


I think what is most important is not where an animal lives but how lovingly they are cared for. Just as we human beings are very adaptable, so are many animals.

Many years ago, I moved to live in a small village in Gloucestershire where my next-door neighbour was a lady who kept and bred Mc Caw parrots. (In fact, she was the only person ever to have succeeded in breeding this species in captivity). She was a very special person. She adored her parrots and had an extraordinary affinity with them. One could say she understood their language! In fact, they were her whole life, and as is always the case when anyone or anything is loved, her parrots thrived. They would be let out to fly wild every day and they would always return in the evenings to her. They shared her whole house with her. I was taught to have a good relationship with them as well and they used to welcome me whenever I would come in. I am sure they benefited from the human connection and would not have bred if they had been unhappy.

Before knowing her, I would have said that certain species ought not to be taken out of their natural habitat, and now I think that if love is involved and when respect is present (these two always go together) and if one knows how to look after a particular animal, the animal simply enters a new kind of habitat.

What I think is wrong is keeping an animal if we don’t have an affinity for them and if they are not held in our hearts, as this will be communicated to the animal. (They will feel ‘captured.’)Thus, I am against those who collect exotic species because it is fashionable to do so, as in such instances, the animals are just there for them, and they are not there for the animal. In other words, there is no real reciprocation and the animal will pick this up and will suffer.

I have a good friend who lives in Bali who recently had a new house built. (In Bali, most houses are pretty open!) ‘Why haven’t you moved in yet,’ I once asked him? ‘I have to wait a bit’, was his reply, ‘I need to give the animal life around here time to establish itself there first and then I’ll move in.’

That touches me. I think in a new spiritual order, there is no ‘one way’ to do things. Rather, we need to experiment and see what works best. But if we do what we do with love in our hearts, we can’t go too wrong.

Serge is a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, Organisational Consultant and Seminar Leader. He works with both individuals and couples from all over the world on SKYPE. He has recently created some interesting new programmes to help people with their spiritual development.
To contact him, email him on info@sergebb.com

Exploring eighteen fundamental principles to living the Spiritual Life

Dear Serge. I am starting out on my spiritual path. But I am finding it difficult. I have a demanding job that takes a lot of my energy and doesn’t allow me to take time off and visit ashrams or go to spiritual retreats or workshops. I also feel more attracted to spirituality as a whole as opposed to any particular religious tradition. There are so many questions I need to ask, but I don’t know where to go for support and guidance.

Can you advise me please? PAUL

SERGE.  As a matter of fact, Paul, I can, as I have been teaching a ‘Do-it-at-Home Spiritual Training Program’ for people exactly like yourself, where you may embark on your Sacred Path, without  ever needing to leave your armchair! How it works is that we talk together twice a month ( or once a fortnight), and more if you wish, for an hour on  ‘SKYPE’, during which time we explore all the issues pertaining to your quest, and we work with whatever material you wish to bring up. After each session, I will give you particular ‘homework’ to do.

For example, I may suggest you practice a particular kind of meditation, study a certain sacred text from a particular tradition, or  read more poetry, listen to certain pieces of sacred music, practice going about your day from a space of loving kindness, or write a short essay, etc!  In this way, you will be given a spiritual direction and be increasingly supported to take ever greater responsibility for your own unfolding. We will also have an e-mailing relationship and you may email me questions which I will do my best to answer.

Please note, Paul, that the Spirituality that I embrace, centers around recognizing the importance of the following eighteen points. If interested, it is important you read them carefully to see if what I offer, corresponds to what you feel you need. Here are my points:

1. There are many paths to God and each of us, according to our culture and soul inclination, needs to find a way that works for us.
2. We may discover our Spirituality without necessarily being a member of any particular Religion.
3. Divinity is both transcendent and immanent, and thus exists both beyond all things, while at the same time is present within all things.
4. If we wish to grow our Spirituality, it requires dedication, discipline, sincerity and the willingness to ‘work on ourselves’ in different ways and at different levels, as according to the kinds of issues and challenges we may face at any particular time.
5. While becoming more Spiritual may  initially start off with the need to use Spirituality to ‘feel better’ about ourselves - that is, to prop up our wounded egos - the deeper aim is ultimately to  go beyond our egos and enter more into  trans-egoic (beyond ego) states of being! This deeper aim will only be put into practice much later, when we are ready for it.
6. This does not mean, however, that we need to deny or seek to transcend our ‘personal egoic self’ – that is, the us that wants to be successful, do well, be liked, etc. Rather, the name of the approach I advocate is an integrative one - about our trying to ‘bring down’ a higher energy into our personal self, so that more and more, this aspect of ourselves will be ‘lifted up’.  Thus,  our ‘personal us’  is continually being moved in the direction of wishing  only to do that which is aligned to what our  higher  or ‘Impersonal’ Self desires. Put another way, we all have two main ‘us-es’ (the personal and the impersonal) and the name of the game is for them both to merge and support each other. Just as the Impersonal us must not be used to drown out our personal needs, so similarly, our egoic self must not hijack our spirituality and try to use  sacred energy to serve its own ‘seperative/egoic agendas’!
7. Spiritual work will always include psychological work. (For example, if we are angry with, and have ‘unfinished business’ with, our own personal father, it will most probably affect how we see and relate to, our idea of God, and therefore, if we are to come closer to the divine, it may require working at healing our relationship with our personal father!)
8. The aim of being spiritual is not to feel high but to be free.  Therefore, going through periods of ‘feeling unhappy’ may not necessarily mean we are off track.
9. Spirituality also has its dark face and if we are sincerely on our path, we need to be willing, at times, to confront that dark face, if it chooses to erupt into our lives in some particular form or other!
10. Becoming more Spiritual and being more fully human, are to be seen as one and the same thing. Therefore, if we wish for some yardstick to try to ‘measure’ our Spiritual growth, it will be by how human we are becoming. I regard it as much more  important that we be able to act wisely, be courageous  or relate kindly to difficult people and be  able to open our hearts to our world, than, say, achieve  some fantastic yogic posture, develop some ‘great psychic ability’  or quote some long sacred text by heart!
11. It is important that we discover an appropriate code of Ethics for ourselves, and do our best to live by that code. (e.g. Buddha’s Noble Way or the Ten Commandments, etc).
12. It is important that we honor the pace we are going and neither try to run before we can walk - that is, not try to embrace states of consciousness we are not yet ready for ( a practice known as ‘spiritual by-passing’)- nor remain overlong at levels that we are now ready to transcend and leave behind.
13. Being Spiritual today is no longer, as in the past, a solitary activity.  As we enter the 21st century, we are entering collective states of consciousness, which means that as a species, we are seeking to ‘evolve together’. As part of the larger whole, therefore, each of us are challenged to embrace that ‘I’ within us that is slowly becoming a ‘We’!
14. Our personal development, therefore, needs to be aligned to human-collective and world need. Our Spirituality will open up for us much more quickly as we attempt to live more and more as the solution to the problems of our world (as opposed to still being part of those problems.)
15. It is therefore important that we seek to ‘make a difference’, and so practice difference-making as best we can. We do not need to wait until we are perfect before being able to be of assistance to our planet. Each of us has his or her unique ‘Service Work’ to do, in those particular areas of life which our souls have drawn us to concern ourselves with.
16. There are two forms of Spiritual Practice that always need practicing, both of which are equally important. The first is engaging in practices (e.g., meditation, yoga) which are not of themselves ‘Spiritual’, but which are designed to put us in states conducive to our spiritual self opening up.  The second is practicing expressing the fruits of that work, by seeking to relate to ourselves, our fellow human beings, our society and our planet, in increasingly conscious, loving, kind, supportive and intelligent ways.
17. The great challenge for each of us is to walk our talk and discover a way of living conducive to allowing what is truest and best about us to surface. There is a strong link between our living ‘holistically’ and being Spiritual. Our spirituality needs to be well anchored in the world and not only may we not need to abandon our everyday work in order to grow our soul life, but it may be a powerful medium through which it emerges. (For example, if all the good financial advisors went to live in the Himalayas, it would mean the world of finance would remain solely in the hands of the sharks!)
18. Thus, the fabric of our everyday daily life, with all its many difficulties and challenges (paying the mortgage, dealing with problematic relationships, etc) is the medium for our spiritual development.  Put simply, most of us need to find ourselves, not by abandoning our world, but by trying to live in it as gracefully and as abundantly as we can.  We cannot be effectively spiritual unless we are well embodied in life. The art is to discover how to ‘Be in the world but not of it.’

If these eighteen points mean something to you, this program may be useful to you. For all further details, see my Spiritual Training Course.  If not, good luck, Paul.

Spirituality that Translates and Spirituality that Transforms

Question. I always get a little bit confused, as spirituality seems to comprise so many different things that often seem very conflicting. For example, a lot of teachings tell one that if we wish to be  truly spiritual, we  will need totally to transcend our ego, whereas a lot of other teachings seem to be about trying to help us feel happier in our ‘separate self’ state. Could you please tell me what you think?

Serge. I would be delighted to try. First, what you say is very true, only I do not see a conflict. Rather I see that the issue is one of different levels of spiritual teachings. We need to proceed step by step. We  need to understand that at root, the spiritual journey is one of our learning to embrace self at ever higher levels of awareness. Most of us come in to the world needing to evolve an ego self, that is, an identity where we experience ourselves as being separate from our world, and for most of us, it takes a very long time to be able to free ourselves from that role.  Indeed, very, very few of us, actually, are at a level where we are able or ready , to begin to discard our ego and to enter  into what the Master Adi Da called the truly radical life!


Put simply, we need to have a secure foundation inside us – an effectively functioning ego, a healthy emotional life - before we are capable or strong enough to begin  contemplating journeying into the void or embracing the  true emptiness.    In Ram Dass’s words’ We need to become a somebody before we are ready to become a nobody’, that is, we need to have established a strong enough separate self identity - even if it is not yet our authentic self, even if it is still based on images we have of ourselves - before we are ready to let  it go  and consider blending with a self that belongs to all of life!


And even then, we may not wish to, or be able to. I must stress that it can be dangerous to ‘let go’ prematurely, (and many of the difficult acid trips I experienced around me in the 60’s, were about hippies taking too strong a dose and being temporarily precipitated into states of  egoless being which in no way were they prepared for).  I say this because  the experience of deep spirituality can be very, very shattering. It is all about the total dissolution of that ‘safe world’ that  most of us believe is the only world and depend upon. And it is not  at all comfortable! (See my long article on ‘The Spiritual Path  as Tough Journey’ ).


Ken Wilbur is very clear on  all this. In his journal ‘One Taste’, he  talks of two kinds of spirituality; spirituality that translates and spirituality that transforms. The former is focussed on consoling the separate self, fortifying it, defending it, promoting it. ‘With translation, the self is given a new way to think or feel about reality. The self is given a new belief – perhaps holistic instead of atomistic, forgiveness instead of blame. The self then learns to translate its world and its being in the terms of this new language or new paradigm and this new and enchanting translation acts, at least temporarily, to alleviate the terror in the heart of the separate self….


But with transformation, the very process of translation itself is challenged, undermined and eventually dismantled. With typical translation, the self (or subject) is given a new way to think about the world; but with radical transformation, the self is inquired into, looked into, grabbed by the throat and literally throttled to death….The self is not made content; the(old) self is made toast!’


Wilbur argues that both of these functions are incredibly important and altogether indispensable. He suggests that translation itself is an absolute necessity and crucial for most of  us for most of our lives and that if we cannot ‘translate adequately’, we can fall into severe neurosis or even psychosis where the boundaries between the self and the world are not transcended but instead begin to crumble.  In his words, ‘This is not breakthrough but breakdown; not transcendence but disaster.’


As I said, only a very few of us are ready to ‘go for’ the higher or deeper spirituality and to leap into the  egoless unity.  We know we are ready  for something deeper only when we become fed up with, and feel like discarding,  translative   spirituality’ with its emphasis on helping us ‘feel better’, be ‘more powerful’, live ‘more causally’,  have ‘more meaning’, be  more the ‘master of our own destiny’, etc.  Much of what we loosely call ‘New Age Spirituality’ falls into this category. The truth is, though, that most of us still need this translative spirituality. 

It is the spirituality that is primarily advocated in this magazine. Translative spirituality helps a lot of us in many important ways and assists us make the shift from being part of the problems in the world to being part of the solution. So, to emphasise my point again, just as developmentally, we are not ready to run before we can walk or  can engage in geometry before we have  properly learned to count, so most of us are not ready to submit ourselves to the shattering process that a genuine  transformative spirituality offers us. While we may like to talk about  transformation or about the joys of not being so ego-centred,  in reality, many of us are not yet ready to die to our old identifications and truly to allow ourselves to be reborn.  So I think we need  equally to honour those spiritualities that  help  us cater for our separate self as well as  those that help us shatter it.

How can having a stroke be a spiritual opportunity?

Question: 'In January, I had a major stroke that left me with significant brain damage and the loss of the use of my left side. With intensive physiotherapy, I am beginning to regain some use of my left leg. However, with all the time I have on my hands, I've been doing a lot of self reflection and can't help feeling something is missing. But I can't articulate what. Given that a lot of focus has been on my physical recovery, I suspect what is missing is a spiritual recovery.

But how? I don't even know what it means to be spiritual. How do you know when you have achieved a good spiritual state? Paul

Serge: Thank you, Paul, for your profound question. The first thing I want to say is that I believe all crises have a spiritual meaning or are initiations of one kind or another for us, wherebye something seems to be removed from us at one level , or we lose something - in your case, the feeling in your left side - in order to make  space for something new, at another level, to emerge in its place. And certainly,  this seems to be happening for you.

You say that  you feel something is missing from your life and that you sense it is spirituality. Well, I see this as  a sign that that your spirituality is  actually starting to emerge or grow inside you. For how do we know that something is absent if we have no sense of  what that thing is? Reply: we don't! If there was no spirituality in your life, you would not have any sense that this ingredient was missing. What the message seems to saying is that  now is the time for you to focus on  developing this aspect of your life, as you  now have the space to do so.

A teacher of mine, Ram Dass,  experienced a similar initiation. It is beautifully documented in a DVD entitled Fierce Grace, which I suggest you buy as I think it will be very insightful for you. Basically, Ram Dass' life was going well. He was successful and popular and making a lot of money. And then  he had a stroke, which incapacitated him. Initially, he saw it as an enemy. Why has this happened to me, he moaned, my life was going so well? It took him some months to accept that at a deeper level, what had occurred was a gift from God to help quieten him. (It is only when we are truly peaceful that the divine can really 'enter us'!)

As this realisation  began to dawn , he started talking in terms of being 'Stroked by the divine'  and   came to see that he was being taken to a whole new level in his life, and that his so-called curse was really  a blessing, albeit a fierce one! It also gave those who loved him the chance to support him ( a spiritual act) and for him, who had always been rigorously self sufficient, to accept help ( another spiritual act!)

You ask, Paul, what it means to be spiritual and how we know when we have achieved a good spiritual state? I will  answer the second question first. My reply is  that we don't always know. Many spiritual teachers talk about how, when we feel most lost and destitute, we may in fact be closer to God than when everything is humming in our lives.

How is this?  It is because when we are in that state, our ego or personality self may be less prominent, and so we are more humble. In other words, it is when we are less ego bound-  or when our egos are not running our lives so prominently -  that we are much more of a space to  be open to God. And how open we are at any time, determines our spiritual state.

I am not here implying that the only way to be spiritual is to go through a crisis and experience loss, as this is certainly not the case. But it is  certainly one way.  And at this moment, it seems to be the particular  spiritual journey that your soul is taking you on. Certainly, many people in dire stress have spoken of how, when they were at their wits end, and nothing was working for them,  they would find themselves crying out  for help to God, or to that divine part of themselves,  and would  experience receiving some kind of reply .

For me, being spiritual and being truly human are the same thing.  Not all religious scholars and priests are necessarily  always spiritual  people, and  similarily, many people who do not think much about spirituality, may be full of sweetness and light and so be very spiritual! Sometimes, as in Ram Dass' case and now, it seems, in yours, grace, or the connection with the divine, can be fierce.

I have just gone through a 'baptism by fire' period myself, so I understand this only too well. I guess one definition of spirituality is the willingness to accept  ( that is, not resist) and to work with, whatever way the divine chooses to throw in our path at any time. So Paul, use this time as an opportunity to come to know yourself better.

What did Jesus say: 'Be still, and know that I am God.' Here is your opportunity to come into this same realisation yourself.

Am I spiritual if all I seem to encounter are no-very-nice things about myself?

Question: I have begun being seriously on my spiritual path and a lot of the time I find myself in a lot of pain often around having to face some not-very-nice things about myself. This isn’t quite what I had expected. I had hoped to come face to face with a more radiant me and to experience a lot of spiritual light. I am not encountering any of this despite meditating regularily and doing my best to live a disciplined spiritual life. Consequently, I am becoming a bit disillusioned.

How am I off beam? Any advice?


Serge’s advice
Well, well well, if you don’t mind me saying, you seem to have a bit of a naïve or romantic idea about what the spiritual path involves, which is certainly not just about sitting on mountaintops basking in radiant light. The aim, I remind you, is not to get ‘high’or to try to feel good (although en route we may experience both). Rather, the aim is to be free, to discover who we really are; the aim is about our trying to return to our source where we can experience our true Self, which is one with all that is. That is the aim. It is about finding our truth.

And this can often be tough, because en route, we need to encounter our untruth, that is, we need to have a clearer idea of the false us, of the ‘pretend’ or the ‘socialised’ us which includes seeing the parts of us that may be arrogant, selfish, inauthentic, etc. And we all have these parts! It follows that unless we can see these aspects of ourselves more clearly, we cannot work transformationally with them. Indeed, this is one of the things that spiritual light, when it comes, often does for us; it illuminates or ‘lights up’ what is untruthful about how we live; it reveals our obstacles or what stands in the way of our being spiritual. From what you say, it appears that this is currently happening with you. If so, it isn’t ‘bad’.

On the contrary. The fact that you seem to be confronting your ‘dark side’ big time, seems to be evidence of your meditation and endeavours towards spiritual discipline paying off. In other words, you seem to be pretty on track. What your problem is, is that you have a rather one-dimensional perspective of what you perceive the spiritual life to be about!

Let me remind you how the late Tibetan lama Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche described being on the path. He saw it as being akin to ‘Licking honey off the razor’s edge’. Carl Jung also reminded us that ‘We don’t become enlightened by sitting in the light, but by going into our darkness.’ And just as light will illumine it for us, so by going deeply into our dark side, we discover more light.

So my advice to you is to accept what is happening and don’t see it as being the result of some mistake, or you doing something wrong, but on the contrary, as evidence of you doing a lot right, and of you being strong enough to face your dark side. I am sorry if you are currently undergoing suffering, but it really is, at times, a very integral part of the whole purificational process.

I recommend you read that great little spiritual classic, ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ by St. John of the Cross. It may offer you comfort as well as give you some important insights. Also, don’t forget that darkness does give way to light. It is always when night is at its very blackest that the first slivers of dawn begin appearing in the sky. I trust that very soon this will be happening for you.

What is madness and how may we deal with it from a Spiritual perspective?

Question: Could you say a little about madness and how one deals with it from a spiritual perspective?

 Serge. It depends on what kind of madness you are referring to. In my books, there are three distinct kinds. The first  kind is what  we ordinarily think of as madness,  that is, people who have great difficulty functioning effectively in society and  who may need to spend large chunks of their lives in special institutions . These people  are  the psychotics. They  often feel persecuted and paranoid. They may pick up messages  from the cosmos signalling that  dark forces are out to get them or  they may  hear voices telling them to do awful things.

This kind of madness does not  generally respond well to subtle energy. Trying to focuss loving energy on such people or suggesting they meditate or visit a guru  is generally counter productive. In most instances, what they need  is   help from someone trained to  understand them and generally to be fed strong medication to  help calm them. When they are in a calmed state, they may then be more  open to  a spiritual imput.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have 'divine madness', the madness afflicting people who are  drunk with ecstasy,  who are filled with  God's joy and love, and who are regarded as mad because they often feel  little need to conform to the orthodox rules of our society.  (They are in touch with 'higher law'!)In this bracket I would inlude teachers of the 'Crazy Wisdom' tradition such as Adi Da ( whose method of awakening is  often to trick people), the late Osho with his fleet of rolls royces, or 'rascal sages' such as Gurdjieff ,who would often teach by shocking his students. Sri Ramana Maharshi, the great Indian saint, was  a true divine drunkard! He was  once found in such a  rapturous state , that ants were beginning to eat up his leg and he never noticed!

 Of course this is not madness at all. These people are 'super sane' and live  from their hearts . They are connected  to divine law; they are  wise, open channels or conduits for divine qualities to flow through them and so 'come from' a very different place than from where you and I come from ( or certainly from where I come from!) Indeed, so linked up  are they to the will of God, that they care little for social niceties or with cultivating pleasing personalities. If you encounter such a  'mad person', you will only come face to face with truth, and if your usual way of relating, is via your artificial, 'socialised' self, you  will probably feel very awkward in their company !

The sad thing is that  these remarkable and awake  human beings, are, as I said,  generally regarded as  being bonkers by those people whom I see as being  the true members of the  real stark-raving-bonkers brigade -  i.e., the  normals!  And here I refer to the vast majority of us who see ourselves as 'normal' and  nice and who  live our lives primarily by  adhering to the rules of convention. Normal, nice man, R.D. Laing reminded us, has been responsible for killing millions and millions  of his fellow,  normal, nice men over the last century, and  has delighted in spending billions  a year on this enterprise, with the result that there is never enough to help the billions on our planet who are starving. Yesterday, on the television, I saw Tony Blair answering questions on the Iraq war and  putting on his normal ' Tony acting sincere  show' and I thought to myself:  'That man is a good example of someone truly stark raving bonkers!'

You see, what normal man does, is that he lives his life in a small narrow box where anything and everything that he does not understand or that does not fit into it,  is either  said not to exist or is labelled 'insane'. Everybody else is   wrong and he is always right! Anything that he doesn't like to face about himself, he projects onto other people. The great visionary Psychologist Abraham Maslow was only too well of the craziness of 'normal man', and described him as 'Living in a state of chronic psychopathology and crippling immaturity'!

Your question was : how do we deal with madness from a spiritual perspective? Well, my answer is that  the madness that  truly needs focussing on, is this madness. And how we deal with it , is  that we recognise it for what it is and  what it results in, and from this place,  we seek to see how and where we too, might be any part of it, and if so, what we can do to  change our ways.   What is also very important is   that we try to expose ourselves as much as possible to those afflicted with divine madness, in the hopes that something of the vision. beauty and wisdom of these great adepts may enter us and pull the scales off our eyes - rub off on us in some way, as this will speed things up for us.

Perhaps this is not the answer you were expecting to your question, but it is the one I am giving you.