This episode explores spiritual transformation through Christian mysticism, focusing on Saint John of the Cross's "dark night." This "dark night" is presented not as a personal struggle, but a divine purification where help comes "from without," leading to a profound reorientation of the will and soul's "rest."

This process is ultimately deification (theosis) – perfecting humanity through union with God, not annihilation. Christ's Paschal Mystery—Gethsemane, crucifixion, resurrection—serves as the ultimate model. Gethsemane exemplifies the will's reorientation ("Not my will, but yours be done"). The cross represents the "dark night" of desolation, and the resurrection signifies the "divine light" of deification and Christ's perfected humanity "possessed" by the divine. Humanity is perfected, like iron infused with fire, without losing its distinctness.

Webb Keane's anthropology offers further insight. His semiotic ideology explains the "dark night" as a divinely orchestrated "semiotic re-calibration" that disrupts the soul's usual perception of God's signs. Keane's ethical life framework views the reoriented will as a divinely afforded ethical stance. Finally, his anthropology of selfhood reveals the Christian "new self" as a "semiotically re-constituted, divinely-possessed identity," challenging modern self-mastery. This transformation is a radical re-creation, becoming more truly oneself by becoming more fully divine, through transformation, not annihilation.