I found nice instructions to scientists in a work by a Catholic saint who is Juan de la Cruz. His popular book, Subida del Monte Carmelo, shows how you climb up to the mountain for your souls to be purified before Lord Jesus. I confess that I cannot understand it fully, but I discovered a process that he tells in the book is quite useful to guide young grad students in science research.

According to St. Juan, purification of souls demands you to have any humane interests vanish out. He refers to the status of the souls as midnight. When you think about the process of scientific research, you are easy to hint it out that we are always in the midnight. Why do you want to study a certain theme? Let's say, you study modeling honey-bees' colonies in chaos. Do you want to perform some simulations that imitate the phenomena for your fame thanks to the findings? Maybe no. You would like to just get interested in the scenes that enchant you very much. You are awed at their behaviors and rush into its modeling. The advent of a plausible model and its accordance with the data obtained in field researches would give a joy to admire what Lord creates from the bottom of your heart. That is the science.

Two years ago, I met a grad student in Alaska, who was on the way to Canada for his enrollment to The University of Waterloo. We saw together in IEEE SMC Conference there. He attended at my presentation. After that, he asked me, "Aren't you proud of people's admiration after a presentation like that you have just given?". I didn't understand what he would like to get from me. "What do you mean? I have never been pleased with such a kind of thing." He again asked me, "What gives you a motivation to do study?" I said to him, "I am very much happy to find something new in the middle of study. It is a time to awe God's giving us scientists. After that happy moment, I am aware of the next things that I have to do in my life". He sighed before me and said, "I could not go on with such  a heavy life". I said to him, "But, it is the life of scientists".

Actually, just half a year before the talk, I met a young scientist in Barcelona who had just finished his PhD successfully in Norway. He told me that he got an offer to work in a corporate research institute but he would not like to leave academia. I asked him, "Do you love working together with your lab mates?" He affirmed it. I again asked him, "Do you hate being alone in a lab?" He said to me, "That is why I applied for a job in the corporation. I really disgust independent research alone". He has found an answer already. He smiled me and extended his right hand to me. We shook hands and he left for Norway.

Life in the midnight goes on for scientists. Sometimes God sheds light to them. Such a short period of joy lets us study the mysteries hidden in nature. This is same as in the process of religious mature described in the book. I am not good at the religious description of the book. I often get furious of what people around me do to me. Maybe, such purification of my soul should be done between heaven and hell after my death. But, purification of souls in the process of science research is very instructive because you must cast away all kinds of bad habits like seduce to make data for getting fame, exaggeration of achievements for getting spot light, which surely corrupt your research life entirely. Not only grad students but renowned professors are easy to get trapped with those sins.

Modern psychology classifies such a kind of attitude as Schizoid personality disorder. However, scientists are difficult to be such personality, because they are ignited by God to disclose what they find in public. You need to be alone in the middle of research. Once you find something nice you let others know it. Enjoying being alone gives you chance of miracle's coming out in your life.