Lazarus in the Labyrinth

Lazarus in the Labyrinth, a psychological novel, takes a startling look at the nature of death as Reno Antonin finds an unorthodox solution to his depression through the rites of a secret society modeled on the Eleusinian mysteries. The novel takes readers on an intricately contrived journey of ideas about depression, death, religion and resurrection and leads to an alternate reality about the nature of consciousness that some will find disturbing, some enthralling.
 
Reno Antonin, a successful athlete and university professor, finds himself falling into a deep depression after a series of medical crises and the slow exposure of a previously repressed memoryof a dark event in his life decades earlier. Taking the advice of his sister, a practicing psychotherapist, Reno embarks on a quest to "kill the Minotaur in the labyrinth," as his therapist defines his archetypal approach as a resolution of Reno's depression.  The therapy fails.
 
Reno and his partner, Blaise, challenge and refute the pervasive religious fantasies that most find so comforting because they promise the continuation of individual identity in an "afterlife." Instead, Reno and Blaise, a medical doctor, accept that death extinguishes the individual, and that a total loss of consciousness through anesthesia anticipates this dissolution of the self.
 
As members of a secret society they explore the prospect of using anesthesia and drama to create a new form of therapeutic, transformative ritual, modeled partly on the mysterious ancient Greek cult at Eleusis, that can take one through a profound experience of suffering, death, and rebirth, confronting and overcoming the pains and regrets of one's earlier life. Resurrection is based on the story of Lazarus, who failed, after he was resurrected, to report any afterlife because he had experienced none. 
 
As a therapeutic approach, Reno and Blaise then realize that when Reno is "resurrected" after going through his personal death drama, his problems are solved because his old consciousness -- and the problems it contained -- no longer exist.