19. Is Sexual Abstinence Necessary or Advisable?
Once people have freed themselves from the misconception of the advantages of sexual abstinence, there will be much less unhappiness. Forced abstinence is an encroachment that can take bitter revenge. The Laws in all Creation show the way clearly enough, wherever one looks. Oppression is unnatural. And everything unnatural is a rebellion against the natural, i.e. the Divine Laws, which, as in all things, cannot bring any good consequences. An exception is not made in this one point. But man must not allow himself to be dominated by sexual impulses, must not make himself the slave of his impulses, otherwise he will raise them to the level of passion, whereby the natural, healthy becomes a morbid vice.
Man should be above this, that is to say: not force abstinence, but exercise supervision with inner, pure morality, so that no evil may befall him or others as a result.
If some people think that they can reach a higher spiritual level through abstinence, it can easily happen that they achieve just the opposite. Depending on his disposition, he will be more or less constantly in a struggle with the natural urges. This struggle takes up a large part of his spiritual forces, thus keeping them under control, so that they cannot be active in any other way. Consequently, a free development of the spiritual forces is hindered. Such a person suffers at times from an oppressive heaviness of spirit which prevents him from an inner, joyful upswing.
The body is a gift entrusted by the Creator and which man is obliged to care for. Just as he cannot abstain from the body’s demands for food, drink, rest and sleep, emptying the bladder and bowels with impunity, just as lack of fresh air and too little exercise soon make themselves felt unpleasantly, so he will not be able to tamper with the healthy desire of a mature body for sexual activity without doing himself some harm.
Fulfilment of the body’s natural urges can only promote one’s inner being, i.e. the development of the spiritual, never inhibit it, otherwise the Creator would not have put it there. But here, as everywhere, every exaggeration is harmful. Care must be taken that the desire is not the result of an artificially stimulated imagination, a weakened body or overstimulated nerves. It must really only be the demand of a healthy body, which does not come very often to man.
This will only happen if a perfect spiritual harmony has already begun between the two sexes, which in the end sometimes also strives towards a physical union.
All other causes are dishonouring and impure for both parties, immoral, even in marriage. Where spiritual harmony is not present, the continuation of a marriage becomes unconditional immorality.
If the social order has not yet found the right way, this deficiency cannot change the Laws of Nature, which will never be governed by human orders and wrongly educated concepts. People, on the other hand, will have no choice but to adapt their state and social institutions to the Laws of Nature, i.e. to the Divine Laws, if they really want to have inner peace and health.
Sexual abstinence also has nothing to do with chastity. Abstinence could at most be classified under the term “modesty” derived from cultivation, education or self-discipline.
By true chastity is meant purity of thought, but in all things, down to work-related thoughts. Chastity is a purely spiritual quality, not a physical one. Even in the fulfilment of the sexual instinct, chastity can be fully preserved through mutual purity of thought.
Moreover, the physical union not only has the purpose of procreation, but the no less valuable and necessary process of an intimate fusion and an exchange of mutual energies for a higher development of force to also take place.
