Rehnadee Shum is the dialect of Shum that Shum Sanctuary uses. I created Rehnadee Shum with the inner spiritual guidance of Guru Omkar. I differentiate Rehnadee Shum from the Shum my Guru taught me which I have coined Mamadee Shum. The instruction to create Rehnadee Shum came to me clairaudiently from Guru Omkar. In this article I will elucidate the key differences of Rehnadee Shum and MaMaDee Shum.
The Shum Portraits, their meanings, meditation techniques and other associated articles and content in Shum Sanctuary are Rehnadee Shum but for a handful of Image-Portraits that I have chosen to keep from Mamadee Shum as a legacy connection. Before I proceed further with this article I would like to note that this is an academic paper. It is not required for you to know this information to use the Shum language for your meditations. If you are curious about the technical details of the different Shum versions and why it has evolved to Rehnadee Shum then read on.
Introduction to Rehnadee Shum
If you read the Webmaster's Intro, you will know that I was drawn to my guru to learn about my religion, Hinduism. I had an innate interest in meditation, but in my early years of study and association with my guru and his monastic clergy who would travel to Malaysia, the study was all about Hindu philosophy. Occasionally during some of the public events Gurudeva would be introduced to his audience as the creator of the Shum language–A Language of Meditation. Apart from that Shum wasn't taught to the lay members of his organisation or the public. It was not until I first visited Gurudeva's monastery in 1991 that I learned my first Shum words and a Shum meditation that was practiced in the group meditation session in the morning. That is where I learned that Gurudeva founded the Shum Language in 1969 and developed it through much of the 70's. However in the 80's Gurudeva devoted his efforts into modernising teaching methods of Hindu philosophy and culture for his lay disciples to the exclusion of Shum.
If I had been a disciple of Gurudeva in the 1970's I would have been inundated by the study and practice of Shum. Starting out as Gurudeva's disciple in the 80's and early 90's, it was all about Hindu philosophy and religious practices. Then in 1995, by which time I joined the ranks of the monks in the monastery Gurudeva burst back into developing and teaching Shum to us. I enjoyed most these years of my monastic life learning Shum from Gurudeva. 1995 to 2001 was a distinct period of renaissance for Shum proceeding the 70's as Gurudeva created more Shum images and Shum words. He also set out on a monumental task of writing the Shum Lexicon where all the Shum words that were created in the 70's and 90's were compiled into a digital database.
I became enamored by the language and would spend hours at a time, usually into the late hours of the night exploring the world of Shum. I had absorbed a lot of words from the Lexicon and they are now an integral part of my life even years after leaving the monastery. When it came to writing content for Shum Sanctuary it would have been just as easy to simply churn out what I had learned from Gurudeva and present it but my spiritual guide Guru Omkar insisted I create Rehnadee Shum. The development of Rehnadee Shum started in 2020. As I was developing the rules for the Structure and Syntax or Rehnadee Shum I realised the need for this new dialect.
Differences between Rehnadee Shum and Mamadee Shum
During the two periods when Gurudeva brought down Shum he created different rules for the language each time. The most substantial rule added to the Shum language in the 90's that wasn't there in the 70's is what I call the Shum Compendium. In the 70's a Shum word is only one word with one meaning. The Shum Compendium Rule allows for words within a word, ( You can learn more about Shum Compendium from Shum Structure and Syntax), so a mystical experience, its associated meditation technique and the philosophy behind the experience resides in a word whereas without the rule as it was in the 70's a word would have to be created for each aspect of a mystical experience. Gurudeva in his Shum-Tyeif Lexicon did bridge some of the words from the 70's to the 90's rules but not all. This left some Shum words that cannot contain Compendiums with legacy issues. For instance the names of the dimensions which cannot carry Compendiums were left as is. Standardising the Compendium Rule with the legacy words was in some cases impossible. I also got instructions form Guru Omkar to systemise the Dimension Count which is the key evolution of Rehnadee Shum from a more rudimentary system of counting the dimensions in Mamadee Shum. The differences and similarities between Mamadee Shum and Rehnadee Shum are listed below.
1. Coined Lables Unique to RehNaDee Shum
To organise Rehnadee Shum I've coined the phrases as follows:
Shum Images List: This is the list of all the images that can be used to create Shum Portraits. There are 108 Shum Images in this list which is largely the same as the Images in Mamadee Shum but for a few Images.
Shum Image-Portraits: Shum words are also known as Portraits. A Shum Portrait usually consists of two or more images however there are also stand alone Shum Images that are Portraits. These single Shum Images are not in the Shum Images List and cannot be connected to other Shum images to create different words. Shum Image-Portraits are reserved for words that name mystical experience that are important goals of meditation or mantras, names or philosophical treatise. The designation of Image-Portraits are unique to Rehnadee Shum.
Sound Shape: Part of a Shum image that makes it distinct from other images.
Connection Stem: Part of a Shum image that helps to connect it with other images to form Shum Portraits. The connection stem can be omitted or transformed according to the rules of Shum Calligraphy.
Dimension Count: The dimension value (from 1 to 14) that a Shum image, Portrait or Image-Portrait carries. The Dimension Count Rules are unique to Rehnadee Shum and is the most significant difference between Rehnadee Shum and Mamadee Shum.
Shum Compendium: The compilation of words within a word. A Shum Portrait that is more than two images long will contain more than one word. By dropping off the left-most image one by one a new word is created. These words are related to the complete Portrait. Both Rehnadee Shum and Mamadee Shum uses Shum Compendium but the rule that govern them is slightly different.
2. Shum Compendium Rules
Gurudeva created the Compendium Rules in the second phase of development of the Shum language in the mid 90's. The word within words ability to encapsulate a mystical experience with its corresponding meditation technique and philosophy was revolutionary. Rehnadee Shum also uses the Compendium Rrule but not in its entirety. A rule that follows Mamadee Shum's Compendium Rule that Rehnadee Shum does not follow is the Shum words nickname. Here is an example:
KaMaKaDeeEeSawReh is the Seventh Chakra in Mamadee Shum. Using the Compendium Rule MaKaDeeEeSawReh, KaDeeEeSawReh, DeeEeSawReh, EeSawReh and SawReh are words of this Compendium. The Shum words nickname locks-in this combination of Shum images to its immediate partners. It is such that if I say KaMa, it means KaMaKaDeeEeSawReh. It follows that, MaKa is MaKaDeeEeSawReh; KaDee is KaDeeEeSawReh until SawReh. Gurudeva created this rule for the benefit of the person leading a guided meditation. The leader of a guided meditation must speak the Shum Portrait as a command for his group to follow. However if the Shum word is long, like a 10th dimensional word it would break the leader's meditation to speak out the entire word. To circumvent this Gurudeva created the two-images nickname for a word.
The draw back of this rule is that the the Shum image partners are locked to each other and cannot be used to form other words. For instance if APPLE was a Shum word, this means if I were to write AP, it has to be proceeded by PLE, also PP would be tied to LE, PL means PLE and L will be inextricably tied to E. So in Mamadee Shum when a Shum Portrait is formed its Shum Images combinations are locked to their immediate partners and cannot be used in other Portraits. This rule reduces the flexibility of the language in vocabulary growth and it also makes word creation quite complicated as you would have to check with other words meticulously to not repeat the image combinations. To compensate for this limitation Gurudeva added 36 more images to the original 72 images. So now there are 108 Shum Images.
Rehnadee Shum does not use the nickname rule of the Shum Compendiums leaving the language more flexible for the creation of Portraits. To address the need for shorter large Dimension Count Portraits, Rehnadee Shum's articulate Dimension Count rules compensate. For instance a 10th dimensional Shum Portrait in Mamadee Shum needs a minimum four Shum images, in Rehnadee Shum a minimum of two Images can carry 10 dimensions or more.
3. The Dimension Count
Every Shum Portrait is connected to one of the 14 dimensions. This dimension information is necessary for the meditation on a Portrait as it directs the focus of our concentration to the area of our body where the experience resides or can be stimulated. Rehnadee Shum has the Dimension Count Rules that have evolved from more rudimentary ones found in Mamadee Shum. In Rehnadee Shum each Shum Image has its own Dimension Count. The value of this count is determined by the Inherent Count of an image plus the values provided by conjunctions and diacritical marks. Details of the Dimension Count rules of Rehnadee Shum can be found in Shum Structure and Syntax. The Shum Images List which lists the Dimension Count of each image can be viewed from this link.
The Dimension Count Rules in Mamadee Shum is more simple where all Shum Images in a Portrait carry the value of one dimension except for Images that have the diacritical mark 'Ff'. This image will carry the dimension value of four. In Mamadee Shum all other conjunct and diacritical marks carry no value in a Shum Portrait except when they are used to form Shum Image-Portraits where the conjunct marks are counted with a dimension value. In Rehnadee Shum I have standardised the Dimension Count so all the conjuct and diacritical marks carry dimension values whether they appear in Portraits or Image-Portraits. Rehnadee Shum also has more varied diacritical marks than in Mamadee Shum.
4. Shum Images List and Shum Alphabets–Similarities and Differences
The Shum Images List of Rehnadee Shum and the Shum-Tyeif Alphabets of Mamadee Shum is mostly the same. There are just a few differences as is shown below. Apart from these changes the ordering of the images in both the list are different. In Mamadee Shum the order of the images follows a chant that helps with memorising the image list. In RehNaDee Shum I've used a logic that groups a base image with its conjuncts and diacritical derivatives. The order of the base image follows the Primary 18 Shum Images.
5. Shum or Shum-Tyeif?
In Rehnadee Shum the Shum language is only referred to as Shum or Shum Language. In Mamadee Shum, Shum-Tyeif also referres to the Shum language. Tyeif (Tyaeef in Rehnadee Shum) is a different language that Gurudeva had conceived. Gurudeva explained to me that Tyaeef is a language that is used beyond the 10th dimension and it deals with extra-terrestrial spiritual experiences. It has to do with mystical travels to planets beyond Earth and how one can learn to be sensitive to the gravity of other planets of our solar system and the constellation of stars around us "to slingshot to those planets." Unfortunately Gurudeva never got to develop this language as his health began to deteriorate in 2001 and later that year he passed on. Shum Sanctuary is only dedicated to the Shum language. The Tyaeef language is beyond the scope of Shum Sanctuary and I have been told by Guru Omkar the Tyaeef language is only functional after we get release from reincarnation in the world.
Conclusion
This is an academic article, if you are among of the handful of people who had studied Shum with Gurudeva in the 1970's you may appreicate the differences between Rehnadee Shum and Mamadee Shum. You will also know that Mamadee is Gurudeva's Shum nickname. For those who are learning Shum for the first time on Shum Sanctuary this article is a 'FYI'. Either way Shum, both Rehnadee and Mamadee, can enhance your meditations by opening you to a wondorous world that each and everyone of us carries around inside of us. Happy exploring.
This has been a treatise on the similarities and differences of Rehnadee Shum and Mamadee Shum's Shum-Tyeif written with the guidance of Guru Omkar by Guhanatha Swami.
