I think for most, you almost have to 'sow your wild oats' at least, before one can be successful on a long period of celibacy. The lower psychology will constantly plague one otherwise, that one is 'not really a man,' etc.

One of the big tools of the bugs also is to make the celibate fear he is becoming queer. You can't be affected by outside forces, like bugs, unless you have a 'hot spot' to be affected. Also a mistake in celibacy is trying to make it a battle of the will. The only real method that will work is to forget about sex, just put it out of your mind. I'm convinced that anyone who has several years of celibacy (no conscious sexual action) will be 'plagued' by it the rest of his life, even if he gets married. It is a superior state, and once one experiences it, he cannot be satisfied with anything else. Its not just that there are 'benefits' to celibacy, but that it is a whole separate and superior state of the mind and body. It is the natural and proper state for man.

Another factor on whether a person can be successively celibate also, and for how long, is his sexual karma. (I think anyone is a hopeless fool to try to figure this stuff out limited to one lifetime.) 'Skandhas' are tendencies brought over from previous lives. If you have been a hedonist for lifetimes, the chances for becoming immediately a successful celibate are about nil, although the battle and effort are invaluable. If your sexual karma is too large, a person will literally fall apart at the seams, become nuts. If he tries to use Will to be continually celibate he will lose his psychological integrity. One part of his psychological nature and 'soul' which is this sexual karma, will split off, accompanied with errant thoughts, and all sorts of effects. So one has to be careful of what is actually too much for oneself, what is rationalization, what is ego, and what is just weakness. Also, there are parts of one's inner nature that can only be satisfied through a heterosexual relationship.

Richard Rose used to say that a man had to stop being celibate at about age 40, because the body lost its youthful resilience for nocturnal emissions, and one would develop prostrate problems, as he did. It probably depends on the person, his body type, etc. Paracelsus says somewhere that imagination creates the reproductive fluid, and thus the solution would be to keep one's mind off it. There are a percentage of genuinely celibate Buddhist monks, and maybe even a few Catholic ones, and they do not all come down with prostrate cancer. A knowledgable Theosophist I asked about this - he knew celibacy - said the 'prostrate problems at 40' was B.S.

Blavatsky refers someplace ^[1] about some cults of Spiritualists in her day, who would take 'spirit wives and husbands,' and that this was just incubi and succubi. You can attract these things, which aren't the same thing as what often accompanies normal nocturnal emissions. They are a coarser type of bug, near physical, and probably often 'bhuts', [restless ghosts"] ^[Britannica] or the astral shells of dead people. One thing that helps sometimes in a coarser type of night terrors, which are bugs that are coarse enough to be near-physical, is to keep moving air over where one is sleeping, like from a table fan, which helps prevent a spook from manifesting. I've read also that blue light is an aid against lower elementals, but in some correspondence I read in which this was recommended, the things were claimed to actually be able to unscrew the light bulb!

Also, avoid sleeping on one's back.

[1. "So with certain mediums, especially those of America, who boast of spiritual husbands and wives. We know personally several Spiritualists, men and women ... who escaped lunacy and death only by becoming Theosophists, and, by following our advice, got finally rid of their spiritual consorts of both sexes." Adyar Pamphlet No. 49 “SPIRITS” OF VARIOUS KINDS", January 1915. hpb.narod.ru/SpiritsVarious.htm ]

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