We always find it amazing when we read in the Western newspaper that such-and-such a ninety-year-old man is getting married. We cannot understand what fun there is in getting married at this age. But ninety is not too old for a Western man to enjoy sex, and the only reason that this is so is because in the West they have a different concept about semen – and one that is much closer to the truth – than we have.

And this concept applies to all aspects of life. The body organs you want to keep in good condition, keep using them. If a man goes on walking right into his old age his legs will remain strong; it is only when he stops using them that they grow weak. If a man uses his head right up till his last breath, then his intelligence will remain as fresh as ever; but if he stops using it, then his brain will become inert.

The life of all organs depends on their usage, on their being active. The organs you use will stay functional longer, and the seminal organs are no exception. The law of the body is that the more you use it the longer it will live. But when you become afraid and stop using your body, then it begins to die. And there is a vicious circle in this, because the man who is afraid will use his body less, and so his body will become weaker. And because it is weak the man will become even more afraid and contract even further, until in the end he extinguishes his very life.

Fear stops us, and by stopping we start dying. “Burn like a candle burning at both ends,” says Rosa Luxemburg, a German woman. Use life fearlessly. Don’t be afraid: you will burn longer. Life is vast, there is plenty of oil in your lamp. But if you don’t turn the wick up, if you stay afraid, you will flicker out.

The ancient cultures and civilizations all over the world have made people very afraid of semen. There are reasons for it. It is easy to enslave a person who has fears about his semen. You have caught him at his very roots. Semen is the root. If a man is full of guilt regarding sex he cannot be powerful, he cannot rebel. His sense of guilt will keep him always down.

It is very easy to suppress a guilty person. Your country, your society, needs you to feel guilty. Whosoever is in power wants everybody to grow up afraid, because afraid they can be mastered. But if a man grows up fearlessly he will break all bonds, all fixed paths, rebel, and live in freedom.

So from their very childhood we teach children not to lose semen; they should withhold and preserve it. We teach them miserliness about semen – and this we call celibacy. This is not celibacy; miserliness is not celibacy, nor has the enforced prevention of ejaculation anything to do with celibacy. Celibacy is a blissful state which happens when you have entered into loving intercourse with the whole of existence, so that there is simply no need for physical intercourse with another person.