THERE will be far less unhappiness if people will only free themselves from the error of the merits of sexual continence. Compulsory continence is an interference which may have dire consequences.

Wherever one looks the Laws in all Creation show the way plainly enough. Suppression is unnatural. All that is unnatural is a rebellion against the Natural and thus the Divine Laws, which in this as in all else can never yield any good results.

No exception is made on this particular point! Man must simply never permit himself to be mastered by the sexual impulse, nor must he become a slave to his instincts, otherwise they will develop into a passion whereby what is natural and healthy will become a morbid vice.

Man should stand above this, which means that he should not force continence upon himself but, with a pure inner morality, practise self-control so that neither he nor others will come to any harm.

If some people think that through continence they can rise higher spiritually, it may well happen that they achieve just the opposite. According to individual disposition, there will be a more or less continual conflict with the natural instincts. This struggle consumes a great part of the person's spiritual powers, keeping them in constraint so that they cannot be active in other directions. Hence the free unfolding of these spiritual powers is hindered. Such persons will at times suffer from a depressing melancholy which will hinder them from an inner joyful soaring upwards.

The physical body is a gift which God entrusted to man and it is his duty to take care of it. Just as he cannot abstain with impunity from satisfying the body's needs of food, drink, rest and sleep, and of relieving bladder and bowels; and just as lack of fresh air and sufficient exercise will soon make him feel uncomfortable; so precisely the same applies to the healthy desire of a mature body for sexual intercourse, with which he cannot toy without doing some harm or other to himself.

Fulfilling the natural desire of the body can only further and never hinder the inner man, i. e., the development of the spiritual, otherwise the Creator would not have placed this desire within him.

But here as in everything else excesses are harmful. Great care must be taken that this desire is not the result of an imagination artificially stimulated by reading or some other cause, or the consequence of an enfeebled body or overwrought nerves. It should really be only the demand of a healthy body, which by no means often occurs with men.

All other reasons are dishonouring to both parties, are impure and immoral, even in marriage. Where there is no spiritual harmony, the continuance of a marriage becomes absolutely immoral.

If the social order has not yet found the right way in this matter, this defect can in no way change the Laws of Nature, which will never adapt themselves to human dispositions or to wrongly fostered ideas. There will, however, be no other choice left to man but finally to adapt the State and social institutions to the Laws of Nature, i. e., to the Divine Laws, if he ultimately wants to have inner peace and become healthy.

Sexual continence has nothing to do with chastity, either! At best it could be included in the concept of "decency", resulting from discipline, education or self-control.

By true chastity is meant purity of thought, but in all things right down to everyday business. Chastity is a purely spiritual and not a physical quality. Even in the act of satisfying the sexual instinct, chastity can be fully preserved where purity of thought reigns on both sides.

Physical union not only serves to procreate, but from it ensues the equally valuable and necessary process of an intimate fusion and a mutual exchange of vibrations, thus producing greater power.