Free The Power of Silence by Carlos Castaneda Page A

clearing, an ancient lookout post commanding the
north and west.
    We sat
there and don Juan returned our conversation to the sorcery stories. He said
that now I knew the story of intent manifesting itself to the nagual Elias and
the story of the spirit knocking on the nagual Julian's door. And I knew how he
had met the spirit, and I certainly could not forget how I had met it. All
these stories, he declared, had the same structure; only the characters
differed. Each story was an abstract tragicomedy with one abstract player,
intent, and two human actors, the nagual and his apprentice. The script was the
abstract core.
    I thought I
had finally understood what he meant, but I could not quite explain even to
myself what it was I understood, nor could I explain it to don Juan. When I
tried to put my thoughts into words I found myself babbling.
    Don Juan
seemed to recognize my state of mind. He suggested that I relax and listen. He told
me his next story was about the process of bringing an apprentice into the
realm of the spirit, a process sorcerers called the trickery of the spirit, or
dusting the connecting link to intent.
    "I've
already told you the story of how the nagual Julian took me to his house after
I was shot and tended my wound until I recovered," don Juan continued.
"But I didn't tell you how he dusted my link, how he taught me to stalk
myself.
    "The
first thing a nagual does with his prospective apprentice is to trick him. That
is, he gives him a jolt on his connecting link to the spirit. There are two
ways of doing this. One is through seminormal channels, which I used with you,
and the other is by means of outright sorcery, which my benefactor used on
me."
    Don Juan
again told me the story of how his benefactor had convinced the people who had
gathered at the road that the wounded man was his son. Then he had paid some
men to carry don Juan, unconscious from shock and loss of blood, to his own
house. Don Juan woke there, days later, and found a kind old man and his fat
wife tending his wound.
    The old man
said his name was Belisario and that his wife was a famous healer and that both
of them were healing his wound. Don Juan told them he had no money, and
Belisario suggested that when he recovered, payment of some sort could be
arranged.
    Don Juan
said that he was thoroughly confused, which was nothing new to him. He was just
a muscular, reckless twenty-year-old Indian, with no brains, no formal
education, and a terrible temper. He had no conception of gratitude. He thought
it was very kind of the old man and his wife to have helped him, but his
intention was to wait for his wound to heal and then simply vanish in the
middle of the night.
    When he had
recovered enough and was ready to flee, old Belisario took him into a room and
in trembling whispers disclosed that the house where they were staying belonged
to a monstrous man who was holding him and his wife prisoner. He asked don Juan
to help them to regain their freedom, to escape from their captor and
tormentor. Before don Juan could reply, a monstrous fish-faced man right out of
a horror tale burst into the room, as if he had been listening behind the door.
He was greenish-gray, had only one unblinking eye in the middle of his forehead,
and was as big as a door. He lurched at don Juan, hissing like a serpent, ready
to tear him apart, and frightened him so greatly that he fainted.
    "His
way of giving me a jolt on my connecting link with the spirit was
masterful." Don Juan laughed. "My benefactor, of course, had shifted
me into heightened awareness prior to the monster's entrance, so that what I
actually saw as a monstrous man was what sorcerers call an inorganic being, a
formless energy field."
    Don Juan
said that he knew countless cases in which his benefactor's devilishness
created hilariously embarrassing situations for all his apprentices, especially
for don Juan himself, whose seriousness and stiffness made him the perfect
subject for his benefactor's