What Is Enlightenment: In many religious traditions, the spiritual teacher was considered essential to transformation. But today, in an age of heightened individualism, you are a rare voice defending the classic tradition of the teacher-student relationship. Can you speak about the role of the teacher on the spiritual path and why it continues to be so essential?

Dario Salas Sommer: There are two kinds of relationships between the master and disciple. There's one where the master gives the disciple information he or she will use to improve his or her life. But there is another kind of relationship where the master gives part of his own consciousness to the disciple. Through the consciousness of the master, students can become enlightened because they now have the parameters within them for what is real and what is false, and by that I'm talking about levels of reality—a deeper reality. Naturally, in the world there are many masters, but they work on different levels. And I believe the highest expression of the student-teacher relationship takes the form of this transmission of the master's consciousness.

In the traditions of the past, initiation ceremonies were carried out in the temples, and these were extremely serious. When a candidate for initiation came up, they would ask him if his intentions were pure, and if he said yes, they would give him two glasses of wine. They'd say, “One of these glasses has poison in it, and the other doesn't. If your intentions are pure, your spirit will guide you to choose the correct glass without the poison.” If the candidate doubted his own intentions, he was free to go. Otherwise, he'd choose a glass and drink it. Naturally, they had the antidote waiting in case he drank the poison. In that initiation, the master would transmit something to the person that would start a fermentation process within the student's soul. And that transmission gave the student motivation, enthusiasm, and strength and initiated the student on the path.

WIE: Many today claim that we no longer need the teacher and that we can transform our consciousness on our own.

Salas: First of all, we have to ask who it is that is expressing that opinion. In the New Age movement, there's too much esoteric information available, and people develop fantasies that spiritual transformation is easy. But the great difficulty has to do with ego. The ego defends itself. It has its own “program.” Within that program is something like a file, and that file is on self-defense. So, is the opinion that we no longer need a teacher being held by the spirit of a person or by the program of that person? I think it's the program defending itself. It's vanity, it's pride, it's an excessive feeling of self-importance.

It's only possible to advance on the spiritual path if we lose our self-importance, because personal importance blinds us. We can't see reality. We don't value other people's opinions because all we do is look at our own image, and this is the basis of narcissism. We only listen when the other person agrees with us. Narcissism damages the possibility of spiritual evolution because narcissists always think they're right. They don't listen to other people's points of view. Narcissism strengthens the ego; humility, on the other hand, is the opposite of narcissistic self-importance.

WIE: So you're saying that a teacher is, in fact, required to bring about spiritual transformation.

Salas: Yes. How can a machine stop being a machine by itself? It's impossible. How can a computer switch on and change its own program? How can a computer modify its own hard disk? There may be good intention, which is respectable, but it doesn't lead you to anything practical. Human beings can't see themselves. A person has a blind spot for their own mind; they can't see their own defects.

Let's relate this to entropy. Entropy is what is easy. When a rock is falling, it's entropy. Can the rock get back to the top of the mountain by itself? It can't. And spiritual evolution is like climbing Mount Olympus. I'm convinced that it's very difficult for a person to change by themselves unless they have a catastrophe in their own life that produces an emotional catharsis—where they're about to die and agonizing on their deathbed, or something like that. We need someone on the outside to look at us and tell us what is happening to us, a guide who's already gone up that path and who knows what the temptations are, where the enemies are, and what you have to do to avoid them.

WIE: What is the student's responsibility in this process?

Salas: I want to caution those who think that being directed by a spiritual master means to encounter a fountain of wisdom and spiritual help without giving anything in return. For the student, spirituality doesn't address itself to his or her capriciousness or whims. If a student has ten defects, he will need to overcome these defects to perfect himself spiritually. God is not going to forgive that person his defects; nobody is going to wipe them away. A student has to conquer them, overcome them. When an Olympic athlete wants to run a hundred meters and be the champion, it doesn't matter if he's a believer or a nonbeliever. It doesn't matter if he prays or if he doesn't pray. What really matters is the physical training, the willpower he has, the discipline he has, the emotions he has, his internal strength. And as he does this, he proves to himself that things work in a certain way according to scientific paradigms and not according to his whims. And through his own life, he's able to acquire faith and profound conviction and create the energy necessary to evolve.

WIE: Can you speak about some of the temptations and obstacles one may encounter on the path?

Salas: They say that a teacher does his work because there are temptations on our path. If there was no temptation, people wouldn't sin. If there was no sin, the teacher would be without a job. If the only thing that existed in the world was goodness, we would be like sheep that do not evolve. Temptations exist for a reason. They lead us to hell, and we can only go to heaven by overcoming and conquering the temptations that are put in front of us.

We might ask ourselves, “Why did God make this so difficult for us?” And the answer is that if we didn't have a body, we wouldn't be in sin; we would be in paradise, but we wouldn't know what life on earth was like. You can't evolve when you're in heaven. You can only evolve if you have a physical body. Through the physical body, you can create the necessary energy that you need to be able to evolve and make your spirit grow. The body is continuously seeking for its own balance, its own homeostasis, but if it arrived at that perfect balance, it would die—as soon as balance occurred, it would be in a static equilibrium and that would be equivalent to death. The same thing happens within the universe, and this is the reason for the eternal struggle between good and evil, which illustrates the perfect wisdom of the energy that created the universe. With regard to human beings, we have to conquer evil to be able to evolve and become more spiritual. So absolute evil is everything that stops the human being from evolving, everything that keeps him in a state of hypnosis. That which is good, from an absolute point of view, is everything that helps a human being to awaken.