The Great Inward Odyssey

In Ben Okri's fabular novel, Astonishing The Gods, the nameless character is abandoned by his nameless guide at the precipice of an abyss. "All around emptiness bristled like a snowdrift. The white winds whipped the last spaces on the highest mountain and all he could see was the pure whiteness of oblivion." In following this gaze into the seemingly unspeakable, we learn that the character was actually standing before an alchemizing bridge. He journeyed on. Fire, a conflagration of mystery, perturbed him. Water, an oceanic presence of confusion, caused him to thrash about and move backwards, not forwards. When the character found courage and equanimity in the tumultuous predicament, the water sure enough transformed into an ethereal air. At this time he noticed that the air itself was populous. "As if in a mist, he saw whole peoples rising from the depths of a great ocean, rising from the forgetful waters. Then, with a fixed and mystic gaze in their eyes, he saw them building a great city of stone, and within it the mighty pyramids and universities and churches and libraries and palaces and all the new unseen wonders of the world. He saw them building a great new future in an invisible space." As he flailed his limbs in the oracular space, the nameless character realized the bridge was nothing more than a dream. Like all dreams exalted in the airy empyrean, they were destined to plummet and reacquaint themselves with the ground. The character eventually makes it across the bridge of self-discovery. When the guide returns, this is the conversation they had:

Boy: "I don't think I will ever understand."
Guide: "Understanding leads to ignorance, especially when it comes too soon."
Boy: "But if I don't understand how can I carry on?"
Guide: "It's because you don't understand that you carry on."