I just finished to read another book of San Juan de la Cruz that is "Noche oscula" - Midnight. In this book, San Juan talked about how God would purify souls of humans that had already casted away various lusts. This purification is irresistible for human souls so that it is a completely passive process for humans.

That process of purification is quite similar to the process of review of academic papers. Authors are subject to the comments of reviewers and must respond to them. I well know sometimes some of authors resist to the comments of reviewers and rebut them aggressively. A medical professor who is also a practitioner told me that he often accused reviewers of his papers on their false in their comments. Some authors had the same attitudes as him in my experience as an editor. But, even if papers were published with such pressure, nobody would appreciate such attitude and finally those kinds of authors should lose any chance to publish more papers finally.

The best policy is to accept whatever reviewers point out as your fault on the description of what you have done. Such obedience surely makes your manuscript better than you can expect. This is true to your nexus with your co-authors. If your co-author were not better or more experienced than you, you should have never involved him or her in your study. You should think reviewers and co-authors are superior to you about their comments and suggestions.

The purification of souls described in the book is same as in the review process about obedience to others who are superior to you. To be mindful is that you should remove those inferior to you in advance from the study. They belong to the world but not to heaven. For doing so, you have to watch out your own lusts, maybe a desire of fame might be the worst one. Without such a kind of lust, you are easy to find out who is bad and who is good to follow.

"Noche oscular" is a good book to read when you are difficult to follow the comments of reviewers in your research writing. It shows ten steps of the purification of souls, which are instructive to academic researchers. I am not a good reader of religious books. I just suggest that you may read it from the point of science researchers. It is very much instructive, I assure it.