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Question: They say, "If God wants to punish a man, He makes that man insane." If a man is being punished by God, what happens to his soul in the meantime?

Comment: From the point of view of tantra yoga theory, the human soul (atman) is a part of God’s Soul (Paramatman). Like God’s Soul, the human soul remains in a perpetual blissful state. The only difference is that God’s Soul knows that this world is God’s Imagination (Maya). The human soul, because it identifies with the objects of the external world, does not understand that the world is God’s Imagination. And, most important, the human soul identifies with the thoughts and the body. The human soul is under influence of a "dark force" and does not recognize its divinity. The whole spiritual path is nothing but to convince the human being that he is Divine.

Therefore, the answer to your question is simple: the soul of an insane person enjoys his bliss as much as in the regular "sane times." Simply, neither those who are around him nor the crazy person himself recognizes this, and, therefore, they remain in the perception of suffering. Via special exercises, one can learn to enjoy both pain and pleasure. (You cannot run away from either—therefore, it is better to learn to live with both.) I have often seen how spiritual people, at death, or during serious illness, feel natural bodily pain, and at the same time enjoy Divine bliss of their soul.

Once I had a "difficulty" in meditation. I mentally asked my master for help. On the next day, I had to go to an area in New Delhi (I don’t remember what for). I called for a motorized rickshaw. I went some distance, and I saw on the way a monk belonging to my order who I didn’t know very well. I stopped the rickshaw and asked him where he was going. It turned out that we were heading in the same direction, so I was glad to give him a ride. It was nice (and useful) to talk to a more experienced brother on the Way. I, of course, told him about my difficulties. (I was young and talkative, in spite of the monastic rules not to complain and not to tell your problems to anyone.) He listened attentively. When I was finished, he looked deep into my eyes with his blissful stare and held my knee. It took only a few seconds for the spiritual energy that was he transferred to me through his look and through his touch to resolve my problem. That night my Master came to me in a dream and resolved my remaining doubts. My meditation became dramatically deeper from that day on.

Later, I found out that the monk was a heart patient with an implanted pacemaker, and that he was in charge of two schools and a children’s home for orphans at opposite ends of Delhi. He got up at five in the morning, meditated for two hours, and, at seven, took the bus to the first school, arrived at eight o’clock, and immediately became busily engaged. After his work there, he went to the other school on another bus (unlike me, a rich foreigner who could take a taxi everywhere and avoid Delhi's deadly public transportation system). He came back to the monastery, of which he was also the head, about ten p.m., and again spent one or two hours in meditation. All this he did suffering continuous chest pains, and knowing that sudden death was a real possiblity. (Doctors, of course, had warned him of this.) He repeated to me a frequent saying of our Master: "Serve and work till death; work and serve even while dying."

-- Anatole
(Translated from Russian)