The next volume in Castaneda's odyssey is similar to the previous one - he remembers events he's forgotten because he was in a Higher State of Consciousness, which he previously called Second Attention, but that term is rarely used in this volume.
The backbone of the book consists of the conceptual analysis of the "cores" of the sorcery stories that Don Juan was telling Castaneda in the previous volumes. It seems each story has a specifically constructed body, consisting of one or more cores, which are intended to lead the apprentice on the path of sorcery exactly in the way previous apprentices (especially for a Nagual) were led.
We find out more details about Don Juan's teachers and benefactors, Don Elias and Don Julian, as well as events that transpired while Don Juan was a young nagual apprentice. The main point from these stories is that Don Juan had to 'die' in order to continue his apprenticeship for nagual. This is not a conceptual death, but rather a physical one where he was buried in a shallow grave and was without pulse for many hours, only coming back to Earth because The Eagle refused to devour his awareness.
The assemblage point and its shifts and moves are also discussed in great detail, and the most intriguing statement Don Juan makes is that the movement of the assemblage point is always a work of "the spirit" and the techniques and methods he taught Castaneda were there only to misdirect his attention. Castaneda learns to be (or the spirit teaches him) in two places at the same time, which happens during the incident when they are attacked by a jaguar in the mountains of Northern Mexico (where jaguars don't live) and are able to escape by Castaneda shutting down his "reasonable mind" and operating only within his "lake of quiet knowledge" mind.
The title of the book is related to the concept introduced in this volume of "lake of knowledge" which is the antithesis of the "reasonable mind" where a person has to put effort and time to learn new things. By being able to access "the lake of knowledge" inside oneself, a person is automatically connected to any knowledge, without the need of learning, thinking, repeating and storing. Don Juan says that sorcerers learn to silence their "reasonable mind" in order to operate from the silent lake of knowledge. This reminds of the Gurdjieff's "Reservoir of Knowledge/Energy" concept which he claimed one is able to connect to by going beyond the physical and mental limits of oneself.
