The Religion of Self-Enlightenment

Book excerpt: Carrick Ares grows up without any particular beliefs in anything. He is boring, and proudly so. Yet when he suddenly dies in a car accident, he experiences what he feels to be the afterlife. It then causes him to go through a huge existential crisis. The only person with whom he speaks about it is a psychiatrist, Paul Turnstone. They together explore the theories Carrick has about life. Carrick goes mad and thinks that he finds the truth of existence. Struggling to dress himself, hinders not his adamance that he knows the answers to the biggest questions of life. He produces a book, The Religion of Self-Enlightenment, which becomes the expression of his theories. It discusses exactly how to heal the crises which are now plaguing individuals and the wider world.