WIE: Can you explain further how this applies to the pursuit of a spiritual path?

Salas: The student has to choose between good and evil for themselves. We choose badly when we choose the dark forces, which are opposed to our light side and which enjoy putting obstacles in front of us. They will tempt us to leave the spiritual path, and we may choose to run away. A person's light side, however, will choose to remain on the path. And yet, when a student has created a good amount of light within themselves, that's when the dark forces are going to attack that person even more strongly. As time goes by, a person will have to face even greater challenges and difficulties. Not physically, but through the person's passion, through their emotions and their thoughts. They're going to be tempted to lose faith. The path gets more difficult and the problems become greater. It's very similar to what happens to someone who takes on bodybuilding. They start working out with small weights, and as time goes by, they need to use heavier and heavier weights. The same thing happens on the spiritual path.

WIE: So no matter what a teacher offers the student, it's ultimately up to that student to choose for the light.

Salas: Yes, and in trying to guide his students, a spiritual master confronts this difficulty. There's a cosmic law that says that you can't make someone evolve—you can't pressure them in any way at all. Our personality is very strong, and we're not conscious beings. We're mechanical beings, and our consciousness has to be developed. But as mechanical beings, the ego feels that it's being threatened to death by the master.

So when someone enters the spiritual path and finds a master, they're often going to be faced with a problem. They come to the master and say, “I want to change. I want to evolve. I want to be spiritual. I'm tired of myself.” The master says, “Then do this.” And the student replies, “Yes, I understand that clearly,” and starts off with a great deal of enthusiasm. But as time goes on, the mechanisms that defend the ego start to work. Gradually, the student begins to believe that what the master says to him is not quite right. The student believes that the master is being abusive. And as a result of these defense mechanisms of the ego, he or she may leave the spiritual path. The student may begin to have aggressive feelings and thoughts toward the master. What happens most frequently is that the student runs away, they leave. And at that moment, the ego causes tremendous anguish, because the person divides into two: a part that really does desire to be on the spiritual path and a dark side that feels that the spiritual path is a death threat, and that closes the path for that person. But the spiritual state a disciple experiences while following this path is so different, so sublime, that once the student has gone beyond a certain limit, he or she will not be the same as before, even if they leave the path. One who has tasted it is eternally bound to it.

WIE: Can you describe what occurs if the student does choose to stay on the path?

Salas: In the end, all initiation represents a struggle between good and evil, between the blind, bestial, and destructive force of the disciple and the intelligent consciousness of the guide. This is why the disciple must obey the teacher's will. Milarepa was one of those great masters who said that people cannot evolve unless they hand over their will. This was practiced in ancient times, but it is not practiced today. At the same time, if a student does actually hand over his or her will, then the master becomes responsible for that person's life. In fact, that's the worst possibility for a master. It's as if you will yourself to become infected with AIDS; nobody would do that. Because, in helping the student to change, the master is taking on the karma of the student—they are changing that person's destiny. I'm not talking about destiny in terms of astrology, but the destiny created as a result of all the actions a person has taken in his or her life. The actions that a person has committed in the past define the person's destiny up to the present moment, and those actions also define what's going to happen in the future.

It's very easy to predict somebody's future without a crystal ball. You just need to know what the main mechanism is for that person and you can guess what's going to happen in their immediate future. So when a spiritual master changes the life of a person, he becomes responsible for that person's life; he is changing that person's life, and in that he is altering life itself.

WIE: The kind of teacher-student relationship you're describing has mostly been relegated to our spiritual past, at least in Western culture. Is it really possible for this kind of relationship to exist in our twenty-first-century world?

Salas: The world is undergoing a crucial period, and we are in desperate need of just, strong, wholehearted, and upright human beings imbued with the ideals of peace, love, abundance, and good for all mankind. To achieve this, each human being has the inescapable obligation to seek moral and spiritual elevation and thus contribute to world peace. And the one who yearns for this must contribute with his own love for humanity. But there exists only one path, and that is to enter into contact with an authentic spiritual guide who will lead the aspirant by the hand along the steep and arduous path, who will be a pillar of support without which he may never successfully overcome the obstacles that are placed in his way.

This process is the rebirth of the human being—a complete regeneration through the vehicle of consciousness. It is freedom from fate, chance, ignorance, vanity, and pain, and one who has accomplished this and is fully conscious of his human duties starts a crusade of impersonal help to humanity. The goal is cooperation toward universal peace, and to give others an opportunity to acquire the same knowledge he or she has received. In this way, a great universal chain is formed whose origin is lost in antiquity and whose existence will never end, because there can be no more sublime power than that of an individual who becomes the complete master of his soul.