Priscilla and Whitney Turner built on the format to create their phenomenal book The War Between the Vowels and the Consonants. Their story harmonizes nonsense, entertainment, spiritual values, and the ancient theme of balancing order and chaos. The story envisions the alphabet as a world in itself that is populated by intelligent letters. In their alphabet world, elite vowels dominate and suppress the common herd of consonants. Social tensions escalate until there is armed conflict and a civil war breaks out. Unexpectedly, a menacing intruder appears on the horizon of the alphabet world. The horrible intruder is an unintelligible scribbling and scrawling chaos. The warring parties are forced to renounce their conflict to repel the invading unintelligible scrawling and scribbling. Consonants and vowels unite to spell out a big sign that says, “Go away, you silly nonsense.”
The story uses two different types of nonsense that we have encountered before. First, there is a nonsense world inhabited by sentient consonants and vowels. Then, that world is attacked by a second type of nonsense—unintelligible mock writing. Hence, the story envisions nonsense both as a creative force that builds worlds and a chaotic force that destroys worlds. The Turners’ story brings both types of nonsense together to impart a spiritual lesson about prejudice.
Dr. Seuss’s On Beyond Zebra is an abecedary of twenty nonsense letters that go beyond the letters of the regular alphabet. The book also evokes the cross-dimensional associations of nonsense. The additional nonsense letters are apparently needed to describe things experienced in another state of existence. One character explains,
In the places I go there are things that I see
That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z.
I’m telling you this cause you’re one of my friends.
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends.
Here again, an abecedarian formula harmonizes nonsense, entertainment, and spiritual experiences. We should put aside the notion that spirituality precludes or supersedes nonsense and entertainment. Furthermore, it is perfectly possible to restore the old spiritual and consciousness-raising uses of abecedaries.
An exercise in my course guided students as they wrote their own nonsense abecedaries. Students were asked to introspect and write about the personal feelings and experiences of composing an abecedary. The majority of students reported fascinating effects on their consciousness. Numerous students compared the exercise to a spiritual practice or mental discipline. Many said that the exercise inspired creativity or opened a hidden channel of the mind.
We live in a hurried world of instant gratification, and writing an abecedary is a time-consuming process that requires application. Even so, most students commented that they benefited from the exercise. Composing an abecedary can be a worthwhile project. You might well benefit from it, especially if you are interested in creative writing.
Nonsense appears in scriptures and holy writings of various religions. The Yoga Vasistha is a compendium of Hindu sacred writings. This ancient holy text includes enigmatic stories such as “The Story of the Three Non-Existent Princes.” Four types of nonsense that we discussed previously are discernable in this story:
Once upon a time in a city which did not exist, there were three princes who were brave and happy. Of them two were unborn and the third had not been conceived. Unfortunately all their relatives died. The princes left their native city to go elsewhere.
During their journey the sun was very hot, and the three princes found shade under three trees: “Two did not exist and the third had not even been planted.” They also discovered three rivers: “Two were dry and in the third there was no water. The princes had a refreshing bath and quenched their thirst in them.” They eventually reached a city that had three beautiful palaces: “Two had not been built at all, and the third had no walls.” The princes cooked rice and gave it to three holy men: “Two had no body and the third had no mouth.” The princes then ate the remainder of the food. “They were greatly pleased. Thus they lived in that city for a long, long time in peace and joy.”54
This story exemplifies erasure. G. C. Lichtenberg, the German physicist and satirist, created nonsense of this type and apparently discovered it independently. Then surrealist artists like Dali followed Lichtenberg’s pattern to write their own original erasures. Erasure appeared independently in two different cultures thousands of years apart. Here is another case, then, that shows that patterns of nonsense are somehow inherent in language.
The Hindu story also contains an element of numerative nonsense, another type we also discussed previously. Specifically, “cooking 99 minus 100 grams of rice” uses number terms unintelligibly in a nonsensical recipe. Numerative nonsense also occurs in the Ramayana, a sacred epic of Hinduism. In one passage, for example, “He kept the five, obtained the triad, took the triad, conquered the pair and then discarded the pair.” Yet the work never establishes any context that would enable readers to determine what the number words are supposed to enumerate. Even so, the number terminology in the unintelligible passage somehow evokes a mysterious supernatural presence, and it does so without conveying definite coherent thoughts to the mind.
In overall structure, “The Story of the Three Non-Existent Princes” is a nonsensical travel narrative. Accordingly, we have now identified four types of nonsense that we discussed before in this one ancient Hindu story. Namely, we found erasure, numerative nonsense, a nonsensical recipe and a nonsensical travel narrative. That makes it plain that the typology of nonsense set out in Chapter 3 is a useful instrument for analyzing and comprehending some holy texts.
The Bible begins with a series of self-contradictions and stunning reversals. Genesis creates a compelling story of Creation by directly contradicting itself multiple times. Specifically, in Genesis I plants existed before the sun and stars, while in Genesis II the sun and stars existed first, before plants. In Genesis I God created Adam and Eve together, but then in Genesis II God created Eve from Adam’s rib. In fact, the whole account of Creation in Genesis is a mesmerizing crazy quilt of contradictory, conflicting, and inconsistent stories about what happened in the beginning.
According to modern scholars, the Creation story in Genesis is an amalgam of several earlier texts. Apparently the original compilers of the Bible treasured several separate traditional narratives about the Creation and wanted to preserve them despite their mutual inconsistencies. What gave the text of Genesis they compiled in that way its remarkable staying power, though?
The compelling power of Genesis’s creation story is partly a function of its status in two major religions. However, some general rules regarding self-contradictions that we previously established on independent grounds also lend their impetus to the Creation story in Genesis. For instance, we saw that beginning a book with a brazen self-contradiction can be a highly effective means of getting readers’ attention. We also saw that a series of nonsensical self-contradictions is the common structural formula behind several familiar playground rhymes. We saw that a nonsensical playground rhyme in that configuration can bring a vivid story to life in the mind, and we found that children chant those nonsensical playground rhymes together to forge social bonds. Similarly, self-contradictions are partly responsible for the enduring majesty of the Creation story told in Genesis. The Bible’s many self-contradictions contribute to its unique tone of deep supernatural mystery.