Silence.

Dual spotlights pick out the immobile figures of Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin standing with heads bowed in silent meditation onstage while a noticeable tension grows in the air.

Bzzzzz. Hmmmmm. Zap! A faulty amp cuts through the stillness and a roadie hurries to correct the problem, to restore the balance. The noise stops, but the crowd remains restless, torn between respect for the requested 60 seconds of silence and a tempting desire to take the dare and scream or whistle. Anything. Just to pierce the everpresent reverent atmosphere.

"Evil Ways!" cries one loaded soul in Berkeley, breaking the spelL More outbursts follow quickly. "Why don't you creeps shut the fuck up?" queries one. "Hey, we paid for music not silence," yells another. The duo raise their heads, aware of the shattered equilibrium, and smile at the audience. Invigorated by their brief devotional, McLaughlin begins strumming the 12-string neck of his dual throated guitar, creating what Santana calls "waves of sound." In a few seconds the crowd gets their wish as the theater is transformed into a reverberating chamber of sound. The walls and ceilings strain as the silence gives way, and, as one Columbia executive puts it, "the three hour fuck begins."

"Why do we want silence?" repeats McLaughlin, drawing his legs up underneath himself on the bed. Relaxing in the bedroom of Devadip Carlos Santana's Mill Valley home, Mahavishnu John is tying his musical and spiritual threads together into a Gordian Knot — very hard to undo. Santana, meanwhile, runs around lighting incense, putting on a John Coltrane record and talking with his wife Debbie before settling down.

"Silence is dynamic," McLaughlin says. "It causes people to feel unity within themselves. It changes the mood and consequently the music starts off on a better and deeper note. The people who scream and whistle during the meditation are like so many monkeys chattering. They expose themselves, but perhaps that is good."

"It's possible that they just don't relate to the music," Santana adds. Seeing Carlos sans hair, in the flesh, takes some getting used to.

"My hair is short because it's Guru's [Sri Chinmoy's] will," he explains. "When it starts getting long, I start swearing, man, and saying "Yeah, fuck, far out." But when I cut my hair, I feel this whole other consciousness that symbolizes inner growth and purity. I begin to talk more humbly and act more sincerely.

One thing both musicians seem rather hesitant to do is talk about their music. They'd rather speak of Sri Chinmoy and the Supreme. However, since music and their faith are inexorably tied together, they become willing to reflect, especially on their recent tour together — another venture carried out at the request of Sri Chinmoy. Was it all they expected? Carlos sums it up: "Some of the audiences have accepted my new directions, they got into it on Caravanserai, but not all. Some just go back to the Rolling Stones, a bag we were in on Abraxas when Greg Rollie was writing a lot of stuff with that loud, self-inflated English cast to it."

Much of the tour's proceeds may go to the Guru in the form of equipment and products necessary to insure the continued existence of the various Sri Chinmoy Centres and the furtherance of the Guru's wisdom in print. The two musicians don't just give money to their mentor, but contribute in various other ways. Santana and his wife have opened up a restaurant in San Francisco called Dipti-Nivas (Boat of Light) as sort of a service to humanity.

Santana has gone all out in his new found devotion to Sri Chinmoy. McLaughlin, meanwhile, will tell you how he woke up one morning with the idea to play and record with Carlos, and how his manager called with the same idea on the very same day. All heavenly coincidence, no doubt. Santana and McLaughlin had met some time back, but the first real confrontation came when the Mahavishnu Orchestra played at Winterland and Carlos was among those in the audience. After the show he went backstage thinking "these guys are from Mars."

"I heard them play and was overwhelmed. When I talked with John he said it was Guru through him and in him that made the music. I knew before he came that a spiritual wave was about to hit and I wanted to be part of it if I was ready."

According to McLaughlin, he "saw a devotee" in Santana. "I had a very powerful feeling toward him. I saw God in Carlos because of his spiritual devotion." (Jesus at the time.) The meeting put Santana on the path to a new spiritual involvement and the decision to record was only steps away once McLaughlin had woken with his inspirational thoughts. During the recording of their album Love Devotion Surrender, Santana's interest in Sri Chinmoy grew until McLaughlin finally took him to one meditation meeting and then another. Santana received Chinmoy's blessing and soon asked to become a disciple.

It's true that McLaughlin was falling off stages in his younger days, stoned out of his mind while Santana was the symbol of freedom and rebellion to hordes of whites and non-whites alike. It's a label he'd rather not have: "People often make the mistake of labelling me as a spokesman for .Chicanos, but I don't identify with La Raza. La Raza never did anything for me." Neither retain those old traits, but McLaughlin, who has been with Chinmoy for years now, seems much more constant, much more schooled in the ways of spiritualism than Santana. With Carlos, his childlike devotion is like a new toy. Almost every one of his sentences contains an innocent yet pleasurable reference to the Supreme. He is reserved, yet joyful, where McLaughlin is instructive and distant. Both are serene.

It's also equally valid that McLaqghlin opened up a whole new realm of listening experiences to the general rock audience after Columbia took a chance with him. His records also sell a substantial amount, but it was the Santana name that pushed Love Devotion Surrender over the top, making it go gold, just as his name was the impetus behind the brashly commercial and artistically awful Santana/Buddy Miles debacle. It's something that Carlos readily admits to these days.

"Yeah, it's true. I just feel sorry for Buddy now. Unless people are marinated by divine essence, they remain products of their environment. If people begin to stay on a certain level, after a while they become like a flower that hasn't reached the sun. It starts getting dry and the music is less juicy. Buddy is a prisoner on a level that's held him for a long time."

Carlos is into new things now. He wants to jam with Eric Clapton, Steve Win wood and Dave Mason. He wants to do albums with Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. He wants to stage a concert billing Santana, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the Rolling Stones together.

"I would like for people to see the different levels we are on. It is an unbelievable thing to see the people who come to see the Stones, man, to see the hunger in their eyes and how they leave after the show. The concerts are like seeing things in the Roman days — you know, we're getting bored so throw in another Christian.

"Mick wanted to jam once when we both played at the Nicaragua benefit in Los Angeles, and I said "Sure, except for one song, "Sympathy For The Devil." " He said "Why not?," and I answered, "Well, I have no sympathy for ignorance." I was almost tempted to ask him to sing "You're So Vain" because I knew how to play it. I was looking right into his eyes and was going to do it because he was bringing it out of me. But when I looked into his eyes, I saw myself a year ago — a prisoner of the system, playing what the people wanted, not what they needed. I felt it would be wrong to offend him because there's a soul inside that body that wants to be free."

Carlos has been working on an album of his own as well as Welcome, the new Santana LP. Santana's solo effort will contain "things that the band don't usually like to play, things that are more personal to me." He'll be using some presently unspecified members of Santana on the record.

As for McLaughlin, he simply wants to add symphonic structures and instruments to his act. "Not necessarily increase the size of the Orchestra, but perhaps have two of them onstage." Both he and Carlos are looking forward to another tour and album together sometime next year with plenty of'"new things," he says.

McLaughlin's band, most of whom are rumored to believe that McLaughlin thinks of himself as a superstar by divine right, are glad to take a rest. Santana's band thinks his collaboration will elicit positive results. "All the guys love Mahavishnu's music and by the time I go back to my band they know I will have learned a lot more about direction. I won't be so hard to work with," Santana explains. "Sometimes my brothers were offended by my talk of spirituality because they just weren't ready for it. They wanted to talk about "some chick they'd laid" or something else that was out. But now, I'm not contradicting myself in their eyes anymore like I once was."

Before was when both Santana and McLaughlin took drugs. Both are now sworn off, but understand that even realizing the spiritual content of their music, some people still take drugs to get off.

"I can't say it's bad or good," McLaughlin shrugged. "I used to take them myself to listen to and play music. What's good is if people utilize them toward a good end. What's bad is if they abuse themselves."

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 30.

"I've seen some incredible musicians who get loaded," says Carlos, "not just audiences, there I agree with Mahavishnu. .. and when they do, they do great things. But I've seen others who get loaded (and to me getting loaded and getting high are different things) and the music that comes out is full of paranoia, insecurities and uncertainties. This is what I used to see in Jimi Hendrix. People used to say he was shy, but I think it was paranoia."

Carlos reacts to our quizzical looks.

"Paranoid of just blowing it," he continues emphatically. "Just realizing he was saying, doing or playing something lame. Of realizing that he was maybe being something that he really wasn't. I used to be afraid of that too."

In between shows at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium the dressing room is more crowded than usual or expected. On the counter, propped up against the mirror is a frame holding portraits of both Guru and Jesus. Less than three hours ago, Carlos Santana was sitting in silent meditation before them, just as he meditates before a picture of Guru every time he gets into his car, asking for strength and guidance for the upcoming set.

Now, with the first show over and a stunning success besides, people mill around the performers, eating food, drinking beer, rekindling old friendships and starting up new ones.

"You know, my name is also McLaughlin," the photographer smiles at Mahavishnu. "Yeah, we could be brothers or cousins or something."

"That's right," countered Mahavishnu easily, as somebody knocks over Santana's picture frame. "We're all brothers, if you know what I mean. All brothers."