[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno-organic_virus]
How interesting to note not only how the ALE concept helps explain the darkside MIND and BODY infections we have witnessed on Lost, but also the additional light the Transmode Virus concept sheds on these same phenomena.... Yes, Sayid has most definitely displayed a trance-like, drained-energy appearance since his darkside baptism and the Sundown raid on the temple. In addition to the effects of the ALE in sucking free-willed initiative out of the host-- replacing it with energy-drained ennui, escalating in a downward spiral of despair, futility, and meaninglessness, finally relinquishing one's will to the Darkseid-- the Transmode Virus concept connects to some additional characteristics not only of the Army of Darkness recruits, but also of MIB/Flocke himself, as well as.... Jacob!
----> Thus it was not at all surprising, in tonight's episode, to hear Sayid say to Flocke: "I don't feel anything." Yes, an ALEful/Transmodal Army of Darkness, an unfeeling zombified body of quantumly-entangled followers, is exactly what the Dark Doctor ordered, in the war of good and evil....
Jacob's literally TOUCHING intersections with the lives of the young candidates on the mainland in the Season 5 finale certainly 'riffs' on the important role of touch in the Transmode concept, and it would be interesting to see how Claire and other members of MIB/Flocke's Army of Darkness were recruited/infected. Like Sayid, were they submerged in the Brown ALE waters of creeping darkness? Or, mirroring Jacob's touching mainland excursion, were they seduced, infected, and affected by the darkside through the touch and tongue of the sly 'ol tempter? If the ALE vs. LE viral component in the ongoing war of good and evil involves more than mere WORDS (memes) aimed at Changing their Minds, and WATER infecting their Hearts/Bodies, then the Transmode concept may add a third component of 
being TOUCHED by an angel, fallen or otherwise, thereby transmitting the effects of the Holy (or unHoly) Ghost to the recipient, spreading with its dark or lightside effects to the very SOULS of those who have been Transmodically Touched.... HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN (or to Hell), INDEED!
Heh-heh-heh.... Perhaps even more delicious is the connection of the Transmode concept to aspects of MIB/Flocke, namely.... yup, that ability to SHAPE-SHIFT....! Shifting between Flocke and Smokey-forms is certainly consistent with the Transmode virus concept. Might this also enable one's Army of Darkness recruits to shift their shape? Will we witness this power on display in some future episode? Certainly SAYID displayed the quick healing/restoring power associated with the Transmode virus, as noted in the above Wikipedia excerpt. And yes, as per my Quantumly-Entangled-Vampires take on the Sundown episode, there may be a 'Hive mind' capability afforded through Transmodical infection, perhaps involved both in darkside and lightside infections.
More intriguingly, however, looming largely on the horizons of some Lost aficionados, is a potential explanatory basis for how one MIB/Flocke can shift their shape to and from that of the SMOKE MONSTER. Hmmm.... How very interesting that the pronounced METALLIC/MECHANISTIC/CLUNKING sound associated with the presence of SMOKEY is EXACTLY what one would expect to hear from an entity infected by a TRANSMODE VIRUS, as they would now exist as a composite ORGANIC/INORGANIC(Techno) being, capable of shifting among a range of different organic and inorganic states, AND would possess the non-trivial ability to interface with... MACHINES...!
Hmmm.... Yeah, that Flocke-cum-Smokey shape-shifter is sounding more and more like a Transmode-Virus/ALE-infected being, and this is what he may in part be referring to in the oblique reference to his 'humanity being taken away'. Being infected with a Transmode Virus-like agent would certainly fit this bill. NOW the interesting issue becomes whether or not MIB willingly was infected, or was he injected against his will and wishes by.... Jacob...? Yes, who is on which side... good vs. evil... light vs. dark.... Made all the more interesting by the cryptically enticing and memetically-infecting clue provided to us in the off-season: "Nothing is irreversible." (More on this, below.)
Boy-oh-boy-oh-boy.... I know what you're thinking and yes, I'm thinking the same thing.... Maybe those good 'ol times Dharmic DESMOND and KELVIN had back in the Swan Hatch era-- fun(!) times injecting themselves with a fluid-based/borne vaccine against a VIRUS-- were not so far-fetched and futile, after all.... All along, did the Dharma Initiative know more than we've given them credit for knowing... namely, that there was a creeping, insidious, darkside virus on the Island, a Transmodic/ALEful virus on the prowl for new recruits, for an Army of Darkness?
And what was REALLY in those injections given by ETHAN and JULIET to Claire while she was with child/Aaron? In addition to hybrid spacetime ontogenetic effects arising to his IN UTERO and NEONATAL exposure to life on the mainland 
and the Island, did AARON receive ALE/Transmodal viral material, captured and transferred in a fluid-borne medium, delivered through the shots Claire received from Ethan and Juliet? Yes, in addition to quite possibly being a new form of being-- comprised of intermixed dark and light matter. as well as dark and light energy, Aaron may also turn out to occupy a special role in the pantheon of Lost characters, as a dual ALE/LE entity, capable of Transmodical powers, not only in shifting his shape, but also shifting among darkside/ALE and lightside/LE forces/foci, AT WILL, making him what may well be the Ultimate Weapon in the War of Good and Evil....! Yes, Aaron may be well-equipped to resist the power of ALE exposure/infection, and we may also learn that the other New Kids On The Block-- Ji Yeon and Charlie Hume-- may be similarly equipped.
Reversible Fates And Plotlines: Heading Toward An Ending That's To Die For-
In addition to Damon Lindelof's recent clue regarding the importance of water for the looming conclusion of Lost, a second 'canonical' clue was provided to us during the offseason: "Nothing is irreversible." In addition to the more obvious ways this relates to the current discussion of dark and lightside infections and attempts to move the values of the variables/people from one side to another, some of us have been speculating about how REVERSIBILITY may figure not only into Jack's future role, but also into the looming timeline merger and the larger resolution of the series as a whole.
As per my prior postings, I have a sneaking suspicion that in no small part, the progress to which Jacob has been referring will involve an 'evolution' of the species both in a figurative and a literal manner, enacting an upward progressive movement purifying the soul and body of its fallen flaws, with: (1) Aaron, Ji Yeon, Charlie Hume, and perhaps even Desmond manifesting a literal evolution, and (2) Jack finally displaying a more 'figurative' progress in the species beyond self-interested, hubris-driven attempts to work against and thwart FATE. Of course, Exhibit A for the latter is the Jack-led/driven effort to rewrite the past through detonating the Jughead fission-powered core.
By showing us a Flash Sideways Timeline (FST) in which Flight 815 safely landed in LAX, Darlton and company have demonstrated that yes, reversibility is possible 
in the Lostverse and, as some of us have discussed in earlier postings, reversibility may well be possible in the 'real world' of our everyday mainland lives, given cutting edge scientific findings and theories. What may be looming on the horizon of the remaining Lost plotlines is an even more intriguing and complex view not of fate vs. free will, but rather the confluential, dualistic, Yin/Yangy interaction of Fate AND Free Will. Interestingly enough, a partially-determined, partially-random stochastic view of phenomena on a macroscopic scale matches up well with the quantum-mechanical-superpositional nature of phenomena at smaller scales....
In short, what may very well be looming on the horizon of the Jack-related part of the plotline is a WILLING, SELF-SACRIFICIAL EMBRACE of the larger Fate AND Free Will view of reality, manifest in full and dramatic fashion by a Jack who is ready, willing, and able to literally DIE FOR a good cause, a better future, and for the needs of others he has put before his own needs.... So yes, this could very well mean that Jack will finally put an end to the need for more 'progress' as a species by willingly submitting to being killed through ritual BAPTISMAL DROWNING in LE-infused, lightside Holy Water, thusly purified and transformed from Candidate to Island Protector....
Another distinct possibility along the same lines-- a willing, self-sacrificlal embrace by Jack of a larger Fate AND Free Will view of reality-- may be prompted by an accelerating encroachment of thoughts and memories from one 
'verse to another, between the FST and the current Islandverse 'reality', now presented in an alternating format during the sixth and final season. Here I can readily see Jack moving further along the same path we have seen him progressing throughout Season 6, moving closer to a full appreciation for, and embracing of, his ironically (now) self-chosen yet fateful Christ-like sacrificial destiny not only to protect and serve the island, but also to protect and serve the greater good and the needs of others... even those others who are 'existing' in the realities of other 'verses....!
Yes, islandverse Jack's growing realization of the FST 'reality'-- especially the existence of his son, David, and the chance to grow a reconciliatory and positive relationship with David-- may very well lead Jack to spearhead a movement to convince the others that they should undo what they have done, to rewrite what they have already once rewritten, through returning to the Swan Hatch site and retrieving the Jughead fission-based core, spent in the FST 'verse, but still intact and unspent in the islandverse.... As per my prior postings, there are various ways this could play out, but at the core of it is a self-sacrificial act of QUANTUM SUICIDE, embraced with full knowledge, foresight, and free-willed choice, an act taken by Jack and the others not only to seal the cork permanently, but also to preserve the FST from ALEful infection by the darkside forces....
What lies on the other 'side' of their QS decision is inherently uncertain, perhaps even less uncertain and more complex than a binary superpositional view might suggest.... But that is why this act would be so powerful as a tangible means of demonstrating progress in the species beyond a mere simplistic view of either/or, of Fate or Free Will, of Good or Evil... In its place is a larger, more complex understanding of the quantumly uncertain yet intriguing adventure that arises out of the confluence of.... Fate and Free Will.... Good and Evil.... Does this mean that a Dark/Light intermixed Matter/Energy being like Aaron really IS the Next Logical Step in the literal evolution of the species....? Or will Aaron fulfill a biblical legacy by helping to bring the people to a Promised Land where evil/sin no longer dwells?
Hmmm.... You know what would be one helluva delicious Multiversic scene...? If we were to learn in the 6.16 "What They Died For " episode that, in one parallel 
but equally real 'verse, they really REALLY did crash into the ocean and pulled a literal 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea', now resting in a metal-encased tomb, immersed in a WATERY grave.... And while they were sinking to the bottom and dying, their lives flashed in a karmic manner, right before their very eyes.... And in those fleeting moments of flashing enlightenment, a heaven of insights were poured into their minds as they witnessed not only the events of their lives played out in their 'verse, but also a broad range of possible lives and life choices, cascading upward and outward in daisy-chain patterns....
Yes, in a 'riff' on that classic An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, we may learn that the entire series of shows, the entire six seasons of Lost, have happened in a veritable 'wink of an eye', flashing before their eyes as they plummeted to their deaths, later embraced in a watery grave.... And it is only in those rare occasions of transcendence, of transitioning from one 'plane' of existence to another, that we catch these fleeting flashes of the greater, larger, complex, quantumly uncertain realities exploding outward from the 'nuclear blast' of our eventual death in this corporeal, four-dimensional plane, before we 'split' off to a connecting flight to another plane of existence....
And, in a manner continuing the alternating format embraced in Season 6, will we serve witness to the Jacob/MIB mirror twin plotline following a similar flightpath of higher-complexity, quantum-uncertainty resolution? Yes, I've wondered whether a firm embrace or even a brotherly 'kiss' between these two would produce that veritable matter/anti-matter 'KABOOM!' that some of us have been envisioning.... Will the series go out with a 'brotherly big bang' merger?
Heh-heh-heh.... One intriguing resolution riffing on the reversibility theme and the biblical story of the Prodigal Son would be if MIB (or whoever is revealed as the true evil one) does finally have a change of mind and heart, from darkness to the light, manifesting reversibility on a truly cosmic scale. Would the very Heavens rejoice when MIB and the fallen angel Nephilim were redeemed into a cosmic family merger, rejoining the lightside fold as it were? And how darkly delicious it would be, if Darlton and company set us up for a decidedly devilish O. Henry twist along the following lines....
While Jacob, MIB, the fallen angel/Army of Darkness in the evil bottleverse, and the rest of Heaven rejoiced in their redemption to the lightside and the smashing of that Darkside bottleverse.... lurking in the deep recesses of the island Temple... 
we see BEN cowering and trembling in trademark ALEful fashion, hiding in a corner.... when... here it comes.... a Dark, Black cloudy mass pours into the room from seemingly out of nowhere... in from a tiny spacetime rift among who knows what verses.... As the black smoke envelops Ben, he rises with great dark strength, transformed, transfused with the ALEful, Transmodic VIrus.... and now HE who is great darkness once again walks the land... Ben turns to the camera, flashes a sly evil grin, and we see his eyes flash red for one fleeting moment, as he then turns away and heads out from the Temple.... Darkside recruiting, now open again for business.... No experience necessary.... On the job training? You betcha....!
Working Through Cosmic Daddy Issues In The 'Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment' Islandgame: Purifying Progress Up The Ladder, Heading To The Promised Land-
In the Beginning, there was Lost, set a cosmic void of heuristic possibilities against which a looming tapestry of viral learning and puzzle-solving would be woven.... and ABC said... it was good.... All kidding aside, as we head down the home stretch in the second half of the final season of Lost, no doubt we will witness a spate of metatheoretical musings aimed at tying things together, anticipations of what the nature and setting of the highly-anticipated Jacob/MIB 6.15 episode will entail, what they died for in 6.16, and how it all will play out in The End....
They say the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and the fact that the energy and intrigue surrounding the show is spiking upward as we near the end is a testament not only to the creative powers of the Lost team, but also to the enduring force and attraction of the archetypal themes woven into the 
tapestry of this televisionary masterpiece. The structure and contents of the show itself, and the numerous rich deposits of self-organized, web-enabled viral learning resources, will ensure a lasting legacy of impacts as a renewable source of insight, meaning, enjoyment, and creativity.... LOST 101: No textbook required. Joley Wood and Doc Jensen-selected core Lost episode list. Required readings= selected online blogs drawn from a myriad of posters. Learning goal= Push the envelope through gaining greater insight into oneself and one's place in the emerging universe of interrelationships, spanning the realms of science, society, politics, economy, philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, religion, and beyond.... What the Lost creative combine has achieved is a monumental work of 21st Century viral learning, encoded on multiple layers lying beneath the surface contents of an entertaining adventure and puzzle-solving challenge.
So how do I see things falling into place at this juncture, heading as we are into the home stretch? One of the first and foremost issues faced by us, and perhaps by any sufficiently sentient being in the universe, lies in the struggle to come to grips with the origin and prospects of our flawed, limited, mortal lives.... Yes, at this deeper level it does all come down to cosmic DADDY ISSUES.... Who's your daddy? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Why is the world not perfect? Why are we flawed? Why do we wrestle with the tidal pull, hither and thither on a daily basis, vacillating and oscillating between good and evil... struggling with issues of fate and free will, holding out hope for a better world to come, through some transcendent transformation looming on the horizon of our own eventual demise...?
Why? Why indeed... Because that's the nature of the game.... And the fleeting glimpses of transcendent 'otherness' we catch in those rare moments of our everyday existence are reinforced and underscored by the weird 'otherworldly' realities revealed to us through quantum physics and other cutting-edge scientific inquiries.... Faith and Science converging to confirm our suspicions that there may indeed be more to life than THIS, more than our flawed, mortal, fallen, entropic, matter-fettered, Standard Model, classical-mechanical existence....
Like Jacob and Esau before us, and Adam and Eve before them, and so on throughout history, as a sentient species we have always grappled with the COSMIC DADDY ISSUES surrounding our origin, nature, and place in the universe. Of course, what puts the DYS in the Dysfunctional Daddy Issues is our slippery-sloped tendency to believe that we can become God, or at least we can follow in the footsteps of the JACOB/ESAU example and fool God/Father/Fate, and it is this very fundamental deception temptation that Jack fell prey to, resulting in the 
fission-fueled J2 Incident. At the very core of this fundamental form of HUBRIS is the belief that we can Autopoetically-impose our free will onto others and to the unfolding universe at large, thereby 'playing God' through a core denial of the inherent dualisms pervading our flawed, fallen lives in this Sphere/Loop/Level of existence. Pick your favorite era, culture, religion, literature, work of art, scientific stream of research, etc.... What these mirrors invariably point out is the enduring struggles associated with higher sentience and the temptations to want to play God and deceive Daddy/God, wrestling with issues of good and evil, fate and free will, and the redemptive hope for making sufficient progress that we as a species can finally put an end to our struggles and move higher up the Jacob's Ladder of enlightenment.
How do I see things falling into place? Here are key plotpoints I see looming in the shadows of recent and future plotlines:
1. Among other things, the Jacob/MIB-focused episode 6.15 may very well mirror key aspects of the nature and structure of the "Once Upon A Time" episode of the original The Prisoner. 1 Like Lost 6.15, this episode involved an intense and prolonged dialogical/dialectical exchange among two strong-willed contestants, providing a heuristic vehicle for exploring a wide range of universal themes, all within the context of an epic and entertaining 'two-player game.'
2. The venue for the episode 6.15 exchange has been intriguingly billed, and in the opening sequence I would not be surprised to see a literal cosmic big bang scenario, followed by a fast-forward flashing depiction of the formation of the universe, finally resting our eyes on a ripe, red apple hanging from a tree in a lush, green garden. Eve picks the apple, eats it, and the rest is history, with a falling from grace for the species, of biblical proportions.
3. Yes, the island is more than a cork.... it is part of a multi-layered, Jacob's Ladder-runged test, a Riverworld-like game, with multiple levels and rules, not unlike the multiple levels/circles, spanning from Hell to Purgatory to Heaven, depicting the soul's epic struggle in DANTE's Divine Comedy....2
4. Back from commercial break after the opening sequence in 6.15, we see two robed men engaged in a heated exchange. As the camera zooms closer, we see it is Jacob and MIB/Esau, striking a 'birthright for food' bargain that would haunt them (and their descendants) for far longer than they had anticipated. Cut to a group of nondescript tents, and the camera zooms in on a blind Isaac falling prey to Jacob's deception, receiving the birthright promised to his brother Esau. Who is the good and who is the evil? Here the historical record and the moral ledger are unclear. Of course, in a heated exchange we hear Esau/MIB first telling Jacob that he really wants to kill him....
5. As the remainder of episode 6.15 plays out, a key 'reveal' shows us that, contrary to what we may have been thinking, islandJacob is not a true, full, final and highest manifestation of good; instead, Jacob is 'merely' a higher-order version of us 'regular' fallen human beings, a bit more highly 'purified' and less fallen, having previously worked through some cosmic daddy issues (etc.) while playing the islandgame on a lower level. Having 'progressed' to a higher level of purification in the multi-leveled 'Jacob's Ladder' of Enlightenment islandgame, Jacob is now able to leverage more of the Island's magical powers, but like us he is continuing to work through remaining cosmic Daddy (and other) issues, prior to climbing all the way through to the top of the
'islandcork', up to Heaven. He is still learning....
6. An important part of the test on one level of the 'cork climbing' Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment 'game' is to help players at the next lower level make sufficient progress that they are able to move to your current level. In accordance with this rule/requirement, Jacob willingly engaged in a self-sacrificial death at the hands of Ben. Thus we can see that although Jacob can access a greater range of islandcork powers than players being tested on lower levels of the game, he is still nonetheless subject to the 'rules of the game' associated not only with his own level, but also the rules governing cross-level interactions.
7. Hence the genius of MIB's exploitation of the Locke-related loophole in the game rules. In addition to being able to take the form of a lower-level player-- MIB into Flocke-- and convince another lower-level player to take Jacob's life, by moving his soul into an avataristic lower-level player 'form,' MIB/Flocke himself was now not capable of being killed by a lower-level player, as in the case of Sayid's failed attempt to follow through on Dogen's instructions.
8. In addition to the show portraying a multileveled game playing out in a Lostisagame horizontal fashion across time, on a deeper plane the show is depicting a multileveled game of life playing out in a vertical manner across time, space, and reality, up and down a veritable Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment, spanning from the depths of Hell, up the islandcork through various levels of Purgatory/Purification, all the way up to Heaven....
9. Now we can see that MIB may just well be a shape-shifting minion or even an aspect/manifestation of the Devil who is playing the key role of tempter/tester in the Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game who, in addition to testing the lower-level castaways, is also testing Jacob's own progress to see if he is ready to climb to the next rung on his titular ladder. Recall that God does indeed allow Satan to test us.... CHRIST in the wilderness, JOB's trials and tribulations, etc. So it makes eminent sense that the evil one's minion/incarnation can shape-shift to the Smoke Monster. Satan's goal is to thwart our progress/movement up the Jacob's Ladder, instead promoting devolution away from the Promised Land of Heaven, moving down to the cork bottom, all the way through it, to the Lake of Fire evil bottleverse. 3
10. In his central role as Tempter/Tester in the multileveled Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game, MIB/Evil Incarnate is governed by a set of game rules put in place by the cosmic Daddy, God the Father. One set of rules governs who he can kill, depending on the player's role, the direction they are headed in the game, what form he is in (Smokey the Dark Death-Dealer, or not?), how the player weighs out on the MA'AT featherweight scale of judgment, etc.... While the rules of the game prevented the evil Tempter from directly killing Jacob, he exploited a Locke-related loophole allowing him to 'copy' and adopt the corporeal appearance of a player as part of the ongoing gameplay/challenge, part of a deceptive ruse to test the players and their ability to 'progress' to a point at which they may move to a higher level in the game. Yes, this is a bi-directional game, and just as it is possible to move upward, climbing higher on Jacob's Ladder toward Heaven, so too is it possible to fall further downward, toward the bottom of the islandcork, with the Lake of Fire evil bottleverse looming largely beneath the cork. Of course, the Evil One wanted Jacob to resist Ben's blade, but instead Jacob followed a self-sacrificial Christlike path, thusly proving sufficient 'progress' to warrant his moving up to the next higher rung on the Ladder of Enlightenment. Lower-level players who are psychics (like Hurley) can see and hear players on the next higher level/rung.
11. Complicating not only the test of Jacob-- but also MIB's role in testing the Lost castaways on a lower rung/level of the game-- is the operation of a game dynamic that is most definitely and deliciously riffing on the recent (2004) movie PRIMER. 4 While Lost connections made by others to date have focused on the time-looping relevance of this complicated movie for the show, here I would propose that any time-looping links and winks are waning in relative importance to the novel idea of leveraging PRIMER-like SOUL-LOOPING dynamics in the Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game, bridging to Farmer's RIVERWORLD series, of course....5
12. No, the soul-looping function of the island is NOT the same as the Locke loophole enabling the Evil/Smokey Tempter/Tester-- and perhaps even higher-level players-- to adopt on an avataristic-yet-materialistic-appearance of a lower-level player, for sake of deceiving players on both the lower (Lost castaways) and higher (Jacob) levels of planes of the game playing field. Instead, it is the soul-looping island-enabled ability which allows Smokey/Evil Incarnate to enact the body/soul switches among Jacob and MIB.
13. Here is a shorthand side-by-side 'scorecard' to help keep things straight in terms of the Jacob/MIB soul-switching-- or body snatching, whichever way you prefer to view it-- to date:
TIME RANGE- LIGHTSIDE/GOOD- DARKSIDE/EVIL-
Birth to ? JACOBbody/JACOBsoul MIBbody/MIBsoul
(=FakeMIB?)
? through 1867 MIBbody/JACOBsoul JACOBbody/MIBsoul
to 2007 (=FakeMIB) (=FakeJake)
Flocke through JACOBbody/JACOBsoul LOCKEbody/MIBsoul
Jacob's death (=Flocke)
According to this view/scorecard, the dark one is able to leverage the island in a Primer-like fashion, but in addition to the island enabling Primer-box-like time looping, it also allows for Soul-looping.... Perhaps we will see this in a form involving first 'knocking out' the intended target/host, in this case, rendering Jacob unconscious. Then MIB could use the island to loop his soul into Jacob's body, with Jacob's soul looping into MIB's body, producing both: (1) a Fake Jacob, i.e., a 'FakeJake' or Fjacob; and (2) a Fake MIB, i.e., a fMIB, with these fake versions operating in 1867 and in the time of the Others and Lost Castaways as witnessed in the Original Timeline. Yes, one of the telltale biblical signs of the evil one is his deceptive adoption of the appearances of others, tempting us through false versions of angels and more. That's why I put a 'FakeMIB?' in parentheses under the first Darkside entry in the above scorecard; maybe we'll find out that ALL of the Evil One's corporeal incarnations on the island have been faked, and that his one true form outside the evil bottleverse is a Wrinkle-In-Timelike.... Smoke Monster....
14. The scorecard helps explain why MIB may have actually been correct in his statement to Alpert that his body was taken; there really may have been a switch involved, not only to complicate the 'test' of the game players at the lower human level (Alpert and the Black Rock survivors), but also to make Jacob's test more challenging, as well....
15. Christ can raise people from the dead.... So while FakeJake was being truthful to Alpert in saying he could not do so, FakeMIB could potentially channel the lightside forces to raise Isabella, in Lazarus-like fashion if, of course, it suited the purposes of the lightside/Christ/God. And FakeMIB did hand Alpert the cross necklace, after all....
----> Yes, Alpert IS wearing Isabella's cross in tonight's episode....
16. So all along, from 1867 through 2007, barring additional soul-switching episodes during that time, Doc Jensen was right in proposing that Jacob was really MIB, in a more deceptive and corporeally-literal way than we had even imagined! The dark one has been FakeJake and FakeLocke/Flocke.... And in the process of becoming Flocke, the dark one may have either forced Jacob's soul back into Jacob's body, or knew Jacob would be inclined to reclaim his own body, setting up the dark one's nefarious plan to fully leverage the loophole through using a lower-level player (Ben) to kill Jacob.
17. So how does one sufficiently 'progress' to the point at which there is an END in the sense that one may be allowed to move up to the next higher level/rung on Jacob's Ladder, thusly moving closer to God? One way is through a CHANGE OF HEART AND MIND, purifying one's soul with the life-giving Life-Equation-infused clear waters... followed by Death and Resurrection at the higher plane of existence, i.e., the next level in the game, up the Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment. And as Ben failed the test of his own progress, plunging the knifeblade deep into Jacob's chest, at that very moment Jacob's heart was rejoicing in knowing he was achieving greater progress beyond his deception of Isaac and his theft of Esau's birthright, moving to the next higher level in the game, grasping firmly the next rung on the Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment.
18. So What They Died For was the sake of others, and their own everlasting salvation. We may indeed learn that the multileveled Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game playing on and through the islandcork is an opportunity for karmic resolution, for purifying the soul, enabling movement toward God. Of course, this opportunity comes at the cost of being subjected to the harshest possible test, and this is where God unleashes Satan as ultimate Tempter/Tester, as he has done so many times in the past.
19. Will we see Sun, Jack and others who have made sufficient progress in the game, laying down their very lives and heads, with Flocke's Army of Darkness slaughtering them in a bloody/macheted episode 6.16 climax, with old friends killing old friends? Is this the shocking, tearful episodic redemption that will set up the final series-ending resolution, in The END?
20. If so, don't be surprised to see that Doc Jensen, Lostisagame, and others are correct in their respective surmises, as our cherished band of castaways will now have died to be resurrected at a higher level on the islandgame, making progress from one plane of existence to another, moving ever closer to.... God. And of course, as per above, they are now occupying the level/plane on which Jacob once existed for them, only this time they are in the role of Island Protector and... Tempter....? Will Doc be right about who will be on the beach, playing the Jacob and MIB roles? Will it be Ben in the latter, and Locke in the former? Or will it be Jack that is the new Jake?
And will the final 'trump' card be AARON who, in true biblical fashion, will ultimately lead them into the Promised Land of purified Heavenly existence, once they've progressed enough to grasp that final rung of the Jacob's Ladder, reaching upward for the firm, welcoming, redemptive embrace of our ultimate DADDY's one true hand... the Hand of God....?
Time will tell....
Dr. Todd J. Hostager
_______________________________________________________________
ENDNOTES:
1. It will indeed be interesting to witness the range of parallels among the 6.15 episode and "Once Upon A Time", an episode from the classic The Prisoner television series:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_(The_Prisoner)
2. For a wealth of Lost insights from someone born under the mirror twin astrological sign of GEMINI, please see Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Divina_Commedia
3. While some may view the stormy arrival of the Black Rock in Ab Aeterno and the sunny, calm arrival of said ship in the Season 5 finale as evidence of two different versions of the Island operating-- an intriguing Fake Island or Fisland-- at this point I would refer the reader to our prior observations of stormy island approaches (Naomi in the helicopter) as evidence of a stormy Source Wall/Event Horizonlike boundary surrounding the island. That's why using a submarine may have some advantages in minimizing wormhole/boundary effects due to moving among the myriad levels in the Lost Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game. I do admit that the notion of a Mirror Matter Fake Island/Fisland is an intriguing proposition....
4. Yes the complex but rewarding Primer (2004) can be mined for a range of relevant insights into Lost. For more on this intriguing independent film please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)
5. One of the more obvious yet relevant 'mirrors' one can hold up to Lost is found in Philip Jose Farmer's classic RIVERWORLD series. Numerous parallels among Riverworld and Lost have already been mapped in prior years, but the following deeper linkages are only now coming into full relief, as a source of insights into potential plotlines lying in the shadow of future Lost episodes, as well as some intriguing elements that may show up in the final resolution of the show:
"During the course of the story it is revealed that the Riverworld had been created as a form of moral test for humanity. In the Riverworld universe sapience is not a naturally occurring phenomenon but is the result of a type of artificially created soul, known as a 
wathan. Wathans are created by a generator, a technology developed and seeded among various worlds by an unknown ancient alien race. Wathan generators create wathans which attach themselves to sufficiently advanced chordates. Wathans are indestructible but become detached from the body upon physical death and wander the universe aimlessly and apparently mindlessly.... The first race to create wathans were only extraordinarily adept tool users up to that point, but lacked individual sapience. Once the first wathans were created, however, their civilization was transformed. Self-awareness increased their capabilities by an order of magnitude, and as the creators of wathan technology, they understood it to the degree that they were able to "catch" wathans released by their own deaths, resurrecting themselves endlessly - or so they thought. They began to have difficulties in reattaching certain wathans to physical bodies, eventually finding it impossible. As this occurred only to the wisest and most ethically advanced wathans, they came to the conclusion that they were "passing on", a process comparable to the Indian religious concept of Moksha." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverworld]
Yes, these aspects of Riverworld mirror not only the death-rebirth themes we're seeing on Lost, but hint at some of the deeper Island functions we've been catching glimpses of to date. Recall that in addition to the importance of water-- an obvious 'nod to Riverworld and more-- the Lost creative combine also pointed us to focus on How the Island would be used... in soul-switching/looping!
"With this in mind, they began wandering the universe, placing wathan generators on worlds with life that could host wathans, thereby creating other sentient species. Once they created a species they determined they could trust, they tasked them with creating yet more sapient species after the whole of their own species had "passed on". This cycle occurred several times until relatively recent times, and the creation of humanity. Humanity's creators are a race of aliens known, among their human allies at least, as 
"the Ethicals"... The Ethicals were the ones who originally brought Wathan technology to Earth, installing both a generator and a collector. The collector would catch and store Wathans—and the human personas and memories accumulated by them—for later retrieval. The reason for this change of policy was that humans were, to them, extraordinary. That is, humans could be both extraordinarily civilized (capable of "passing on" within a single lifetime, such as the Buddha), and extraordinarily barbaric (capable of brutality unimaginable to any of their species, such as Nazis, the Spanish Inquisition, etc.). The best of humanity was more than worthy of carrying on the cycle of creation, yet the worst of humanity obviously could not be trusted with wathan technology. To solve the conundrum, the Ethicals decided to put humanity to a test - the Riverworld.... The entire construction of the Riverworld ecology was meant to help further this process of moral contemplation. The repetitive nature of the physical environment was supposed to encourage a concern with inward rather than outward issues. The poverty of natural resources was meant to prevent the development of a higher technology and the same old kinds of human society, and the food provided by the grails, the presence of abundant water and potential shelter, and the resurrections were meant to obviate the need for an economy or the need to strive for survival. Alcohol, marijuana, and the LSD-like dreamgum were provided for recreational purposes and as emotional enhancements to help the process to contemplation along—although the use of the drugs does not always take humans in that direction."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverworld]
Yes, the parallels to Lost are rich and rewarding, linking not only to surface contents but also to narrative structures and potential plot resolution components.