#our mere being is knowing

[shinymoonbird]

🕉️ 🔱  Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Arunachala Ramanaya   🔱 🕉️

The Paramount Importance of Self Attention, by Sri Sadhu Om, As recorded by Michael James

Part Three - Mountain Path: April-June 2012 - Excerpt

Note of 23rd December 1977

'How can we live a pure life in this world?'

Sadhu Om:  Once a PWD inspector asked Bhagavan, 'How can we live a pure life in this world?' and he replied, 'You know the nattan-kal [a standing stone fixed at a road junction] we have in our villages [in the Madurai district]. See  how many uses it has: villagers place their head-loads on it when they take rest, cows use it as a scratching-post, betel-chewers wipe their surplus chunnambu [lime-paste] on it, and others spit on it. We must live in this world like those nattan-kals.'

It is only in our view that Bhagavan appears to be compassionate. He actually has no compassion, because compassion entails the existence of others, and in his view there are no others. However, it is also true to say that he has perfect compassion, because he loves us all as himself, so he truly suffers with each of our sufferings. See the paradoxical nature of self-knowledge. It reconciles irreconcilable opposites. It makes having no compassion the same as having perfect compassion. Who can understand the state of self-knowledge?

'Love is our being, desire is our rising'. Love wants oneness, desire wants manyness. The movement of love is towards oneness, and of desire is towards manyness. Love is ever self-contented, desire is ever discontented. The fulfilment and perfect state of love is self-love (svatma-bhakti), which is the experience of absolute oneness, but desire can never be fulfilled.

Therefore all yogas or sādhanās aim towards oneness (which is sometimes called 'union' with God or the reality), and one-pointedness of mind is their vehicle. Sādhanā is a growth from desire to love, and self-love is the driving force behind this growth. The development of this growth towards love leads the aspirant to love just one God or one guru, which is the highest form of dualistic love, and the most effective aid to develop perfect self-love.

The guru shows the aspirant that the only means to achieve perfect self-love is self-attention. The aspirant therefore eagerly practises self-attention, but until his practice blossoms into true self-love, he continues clinging to his guru as the object of his love. His guru-bhakti is the stay and support that steadies and strengthens his growth towards self-love. This is the state that Bhagavan describes in verse 72 of Aksaramanamalai:

Arunāchala, protect [me] as a support to cling to so that I may not droop down like a tender creeper without support.

The aspirant's love for and faith in his guru constantly drives him back to self-attention, which is the path taught by the guru, and as a result he comes to be increasingly convinced that his own self is the true form of his guru. Thus his dualistic guru-bhakti dissolves naturally and smoothly into non-dualistic svātma-bhakti [love for self alone], which is his true nature. One-pointed fidelity to the guru and his teachings is therefore an essential ingredient in sādhanā, and it alone will yield the much longed for fruit of self-knowledge.

In Sri Arunāchala Stuti Panchakam Bhagavan teaches us the true nature of guru-bhakti. For example:

Arunāchala, when I took refuge in you as [my only] God, you completely annihilated me. (Aksaramanamalai verse 48)

... Is there any deficiency [or grievance] for me? ... Do whatever you wish, my beloved, only give me ever-increasing love for your two feet. (Navamanimalai verse 7) 

What to say? Your will is my will, [and] that [alone] is happiness for me, lord of my life. (Patikam verse 2)

It is necessary to attempt to practise self-attention before one can possibly write commentaries on or translate Bhagavan's works. Only *--by repeatedly trying and failing can one begin to understand his teachings.

Take for instance the first sentence of Ulladu Narpadu: 'Except what is, does consciousness that is exist?' To a mind that is unaccustomed to the practice of self-attention this will seem a very abstract idea, because the first word ulladu ['what is' or existence] will immediately suggest the existence of things, so such a mind will understand this sentence to mean, 'Unless things exist, can they be known?' But Bhagavan is always pointing to self, so by the word ulladu he means nothing other than 'I', which is the sole reality, that which alone actually exists.

However this will be immediately understood only by those who are well-soaked in the practice of self-attention. Such a person will understand this sentence to mean, 'Other than what is [namely 'I'], can there be any consciousness of being [any awareness 'am']?' which they will understand as implying, 'My self-awareness [cit] is not other than my being [sat]'. It is so simple, but to ordinary people it seems abstract.

All scriptures and gurus aim at drawing our attention to ourselves, but as I said in the first part of The Path of Sri Ramana, up till now they have all started by conceding to our ignorant outlook of taking the ego to be real, and so they start their teaching from that perspective. But why not start from the source — from what is actually real? Bhagavan was a revolutionary, so he never conceded that our viewpoint was correct, but instead always pointed directly to the one selfevident reality, 'I am'.

Nowadays people have so many strange ideas about yoga, but in Ulladu Narpadu Bhagavan has given us a clear idea of what real yoga actually is.

It is to Muruganar that we owe the composition of Ulladu Narpadu. If it were not for him those twenty-one verses would have been ignored [a reference to the twenty-one stray verses composed by Bhagavan that Muruganar gathered together and asked him on 21st July 1928 to enlarge upon to form a work revealing the nature of reality and the means by which we can experience it, which prompted him to compose during the next three weeks Ulladu Narpadu, in which eventually only three of the original twenty-one verses were included (namely verses 16, 37 and 40), leaving the other eighteen to be relegated to the supplement (anubandham). Bhagavan was so confident of the power of his silence that he took no initiative to write or record his teachings, so it is to Muruganar that we owe the composition and compilation of the three principal sāstras [scriptural texts] containing Bhagavan's philosophy, namely Upadesa Undiyar, Ulladu Narpadu and Guru Vachaka Kovai.

Arunachala - Unnamalai and Annamalai

Photo by  G Anand Giri

[ofekma]

"how can you be an animorphs fan and support Israel?"

I don't know, how CAN I be the fan of a book series talking about kids being forced to grow up too fast due to being a part of a war that has been going on for longer than they're alive, trying to defend their home against an invading force?

Seeing how this situation affects their mental state, world view and relationships with each other? Not being able to fully trust anyone else because they can turn out to secretly wish for your demise?

How can I be the fan of a series that mirrors the way I grew up, of feeling scared and lost and small but knowing that you have to keep going because there's no other way?

Knowing that the other side has people who are like you, who never really wanted to hurt anyone but are being forced to fight too, who were brainwashed from birth to not see people like you as people?

Knowing that innocents die in war, that cruel, messed up, unjust things happen in wars but not seeing another way forward?

Wanting to save your loved ones who are now being kept hostages?

YEAH I HAVE NO IDEA WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD I, AN ISRAELI PERSON, BE AN ANIMORPHS FAN?

[skaruresonic]

Twitter: "these people are mentally ill and dangerous. they'll excommunicate you if you don't exactly parrot their views"

my friends: actually some of the most caring and chill people I've ever met, who are extremely hard on themselves and passionate about their work and who have largely withdrawn from Sonic in order to move on from the drama

maybe I'm biased but

[yourqueenb]

Thank you for your answer, and thank you for putting so much thought into that 💞💞💞 mal and nia are my main LIs and at first I was really glad that at least two members of the party stayed with each other and mb even got closer but I can see how it would be annoying and/or sad for people who romance one of them exclusively. I think that I mostly just want to see eeal bonds between our party bc idk it just feels a bit hollow? In the first book they were just thrown together by chance but a whole year has passed and without MC there to hold them together it just shows how much less there is with exception of some banter and general sympathy towards one another. I also think that excluding Threep and other non-romancable characters from the main friend group makes most of the dynamic in choices hollow bc lmao all these people are here to try and fuck us and no one cares about each other beyond that. I don't really like TRR or TF but I feel like friendship was so much richer in previous books, like those two series, OH and TE - and in PM they managed to create a poly route where I could feel solid platonic bonds between people other than MC and LIs (Sloane and Hayden, Steve and Hayden or Damien and Nadia). Or mb I'm just a bit underwhelmed with the current plot course in blades lmao (sorry for rambling around the same three thoughts I just can't seem to gather my thoughts on this whole thing together 🫡)

I’m so sorry, I meant to respond to this sooner. But no, I completely get what you’re saying! You made some good points.

Even though all of these characters were kind of thrown together in book 1, personally I did feel like they were more like a family by the end of it. And I think that’s one of the reasons why everyone loved Blades so much. However, I do understand why the bonds aren’t as tight in this book. It makes sense for there to be some distance between everyone after what happened to MC and the apparent strife it caused. But I feel like they haven’t done enough to fully bring the group back together again and reform those poignant emotional bonds.

As you basically said with the exception of some banter and general sympathy towards one another, pretty much all of the focus is on each member’s relationship with MC alone. And even those relationships are very one sided with each person relying on MC for support, but not giving much in return. When the main cast is tied together by genuine relationships with each other rather than simply all waiting for their turns in MC’s bed, it’s really great to see and makes for a better book overall. That’s why the Pend Pals are still my personal favorite friend group to this day.

I will say that I actually don’t feel like the relationship dynamics in Blades specifically are hollow because everyone’s trying to sleep with MC though. And maybe that’s because I’m only romancing Mal (and flirting with Aerin on the side). But yeah, I think it’s because the writers have really been ignoring the opportunities to capitalize off of emotional beats (which I’ve said a few times before) rather than the characters just not having more to their relationships at all

[ultfreakme]

frankly, get rid of all the nepo babies of the trinity as successors. I love Jon but I’m including him too he can get a new name because frankly he needs a bit of a break from Superman and if DC weren’t cowards and hired Chinese and EA writers, Kenan would be far along his story and would work as a perfect, unique take on Superman. We already HAVE a Batman for the future; Jace Fox. We also already have Yara for Wonder Woman. And ik Nubia doesn’t want to use the title of wonder woman but she could function in the same role as diana while being known as Queen Nubia. Literally there is no point arguing about who gets to be the new trinity when we have a rock solid foundation of characters already.

The whole new trinity bs is annoying especially when it’s all just the kids of the old ones. Sorry but I don’t want to see the same damn story thrice.

[anarkhebringer]

I will add to the well wishes today. Happy Trans Day of Visibility to any Two-Spirit folks that want to be included in it. I shake your hand in associating with it and also giving myself a special little treat that's just for me.

Also ᎬᎨᏳᎢ all Native queer folks, if I knew enough Chickasaw and Choctaw I'd say it through all three tribes in my family.

[watermelonflavoredwrath]

Do not let them take you.

Do not let them steal your life.

They want us dead.

They want us all dead.

They want to crush us under their boots so freshly licked by cowards.

So live.

Live to spite them.

Live to be another voice screaming the truth so we might be heard

Live and protect each other.

Live.

Please live.

Do not let them steal your life.

Do not let them take you.

[here-there-were-dragons]

as a general rule, on average, if americans consistently complain about a food being conceptually weird, gross, and scary, then it probably tastes amazing. or at least inoffensive.

this is because in my experience americans for the most part (give or take a few exceptions by region) think eating literally anything other than beef, chicken, bread, eggs, peanut butter jelly sandwitches, ketchup, and disgusting cloyingly artificial brown sludge soda is insurmountably weird, gross, and scary.

[fragmentedblade]

Not to be a jingfu on main, but it's so cute that Jing Yuan thought of Fu Xuan with those jelly beans

[mantisgodsdomain]

"oh, yeah," we think, "we could probably cross this over into Li nked Uni verse if we actually draw out the canon for long enough, smacking different versions of the same character into each other is always fun especially when it has the potential for massive cultural differences and shit like running into things where the thing that has been forgotten has significance beyond the things that are remembered. Hey, we should probably check the comic in order to comply with the six-month rule, we don't think we ever finished-"

We return from the reference images. We have remembered why we didn't finish looking into the base comic.

[shinymoonbird]

“Ramana Maharshi” is a painting by Sridhar Reddy Bandi - Fine Art America

🕉️ 🔱  Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Arunachala Ramanaya   🔱 🕉️

The Paramount Importance of Self Attention, by Sri Sadhu Om, As recorded by Michael James

Extracts from a tape-recording: 13th March 1977

Sadhu Om: Self-attention is ever going on. It needs no effort.

Here the whole philosophy is based on the principle that people are not contented by attending to second or third persons, so vairāgya [freedom from desire to experience otherness] must be the base. One should know that attention to second or third persons brings misery.

When Bhagavan was asked, 'Why should we attend to the first person or ātman?' he replied,

'If you do not attend to the first person, you attend to second or third persons instead. If you do not do ātma-vicāra, you do anaātma-vicāra. Neither is necessary. To be is not doing, not attending'. 

Until one comes to the conclusion that attending to second or third persons — or even to the first person — is ultimately unnecessary, one should attend to the first person. But if that is felt to be tiresome, be free from that also, and just be happy with your mere being.

[Later Sadhu Om explained that this is like saying, 'If you do not like this coin with a head, you can have this one with a tail', knowing that both coins are one. Remaining with only our being is the state of attending to nothing other than self.]

There must be a first person to attend to second or third persons. Must not the first person exist before it can start to attend to any second or third person, and does it knοw that it is? After waking up from sleep as so-and-so, the first knowledge that comes to us is about our own existence. That itself is self-attention. Knowing that 'I am so-and-so' is knowledge of the first person. How does this knowledge come? Only by attending to the first person. So attention to the first person is always going on, even while we are attending to second or third persons. Without attention to the first person, attention to second or third persons cannot occur.

The knowledge of second or third persons indicates the presence of the first person. When the world is known, that shows that the first person is present. This is self-attention without effort. A jñāni is always paying attention in this way. He is not actually paying attention, because he is self-attention. If he knows anything, he clearly knows, 'Because I am, these are known. Because I am, I hear this. Because I am, I smell this'. This 'I am' is a constant knowledge. This constant self-attention does not fade away when he seems to attend to second or third persons.

This is the difference between a jñāni and an ajñāni. The ajñāni forgets that he is experiencing his being, whereas the jñāni does not forget this. He is fully aware of this 'I am'. How can this awareness be there unless there is an attention? Since awareness and attention are one and the same, if we are aware that 'I am', we are attending to 'I am'. There will be no exertion in such self-attention, and there will be no forgetfulness of the first person even when attending to second or third persons.

Can we actually forget self? No, we cannot. We cannot but knοw self.

In deep sleep our self-attention is without second or third persons. In sleep we do not need any outside indicators, any second or third persons, to knοw that 'I am'. Self-attention is ever present in sleep. Though second and third persons, the outer signs, are absent, we do not doubt whether or not 'I am'. Our being is our attention; our sat is our cit, our mere being is knowing.

Now we want to knοw, so we have to attend. Attending is a verb, but though 'I am' is also a verb, it is not an action, a kriya-rūpa, but is just being, a sat-rūpa. So in 'I am', in just being, there is no exertion and hence no tiredness. Self-attention is our svabhava, our very nature, not our doing, not our making effort. It is constant, even in sleep.

When we once discover that we are fully aware of our being in sleep, we will know that we will be fully aware of it in death and in pralaya (the dissolution of the universe). We alone are; nothing is ever destroyed.

In sleep there is no fear. Bhagavan said, 'Where there are thoughts, there will be fear. When thoughts subside, there is no fear'. Fear, sorrow and desire are nothing but thoughts. Thought creates them. In sleep we remain alone, without thoughts. When we are alone there is no fear. Fear comes only due to thoughts, and thoughts are cheating us. We can be fearless only when we are perfectly alone, when we simply remain as we really are, devoid of thought. In sleep there is no fear because there is no thought.

The thinker is the first thought, the 'I'-thought. Who is thinking? The ego, the first person. This first person, the first thought, rises on waking from sleep. The knowledge of the first person is the first knowledge we get on waking from sleep. Therefore, self-attention is ever going on. Until we knοw that, we have to make effort to attend to self, and after knowing it, we never have to worry about it or anything else.

Knowing self happens in a split second. It makes everything, the entire universe, dissolve.

Both light and darkness are necessary to make a film show. In the projector there is light, but the film has darker portions that prevent the light passing through. Only through the less dark portions does the light escape to the screen. If light alone were present, no film show would be seen. Likewise, if a uniformly dark film were present, nothing would be seen. Therefore both light and darkness are essential. To make the show of this world, both vidyā [knowledge or self-awareness] and avidyā [ignorance or self-forgetfulness] are necessary. But is it necessary to have this show?

Arunachala South Facing -  Art Print by Susan Rankin  - Fine Art America

🕉️

[douwatahima]

the one thing that bugs me with all of the speculation about season 2 coming out in may is that...we know the season's not finished yet? like, vico literally posted TODAY that they were doing adr work for season 2. and yes adr is something that tends to come near the end of the process (as far as i know), but still. it's not DONE. that doesn't mean that it can't be finished soon, i'm just worried that hbo might want it out by emmy time even if the creative team feels like they need more time with it.

look, i want season 2 as much as the next person, but i want it when everyone is happy with the finished product NOT when it would be most convenient for awards season.

[oceanwithinsblog]

honestly? at times it's so hard to deal with the fact that adulthood means working every week, having so little time to take care of yourself and the people you care about, having trouble at planning a meet up or an outing with your friend(s), having to decide what hobbies you want to pursue and which ones you're willing (or forced) to give up, organizing all your expenses and purchases, letting yourself be vulnerable and understanding that being alone is important and you have to spend some quality time on your own as you can't totally rely on people being there for you.

at times adulthood hits me so hard and makes me feel so little, powerless and lonely that i truly despise it. but there's no going back.

[candied-cae]

Alright guys- as the biggest Wee John Feeney Stan I know- I’m taking a second to have my allotted “plate of corn moment”.

WEE JOHN IS PLAYING THE PIANO IN THIS SCENE?!?!?!

While everyone was in chaos getting dressed, since Stede didn't have anything to dress John in, he's just sitting with everyone while they get changed and he's providing the theme music!

I'm deciding that he could've easily kept an eye on the English as they were readying to board, but he didn't wanna be left out and so he joined them all in the captain quarters. And maybe he could've been helping some of them get their complicated fancy-man outfits figured out, but he just wanted to sit down at the piano and play a little tune to get everyone in an aristocratic mood.

Wee John is literally the most creative person on the boat: is covered in rocking tats, plays percussion with a barrel and wooden spoons, has sewn dressed with his mother, cares about having a quality story time experience with proper voices, puts on yellow war paint for the raid, plays the piano, dresses up and performs as a black cat of death alongside his bestie, and I don't know what his leaf get up was going to result in for the talent show, but I know it was going to be beautiful.

All this to say...

I love him. I love him. I love him.

I love Wee John Feeney, your honor.

And I love Kristian Nairn so fucking much for making the greatest character ever.

More OFMD

[necronomeconomicism]

Ok gotta talk about it.

As a Jewish historian, I fucking hate Israel in ways most probably will never be able to comprehend. I'm going to try and explain it anyways. The central creation myth of Israel is that it is Jewish, and then consequently, that Israel is a part of Jewishness. Its easy to simply state this is false, but fully comprehending this and putting it into practice in thought and deed seems rare to me.

The evil at the heart of this violence predates the recent acceleration of genocide. Israel is a colony, and more than that, an antisemitic fraud itself. After WW2, when Israel was being founded, the Jews of Europe generally did not wave goodbye to their neighbors and head to the promised land. Many were expelled from their homes. Zionism itself, as an action, was a false choice at the time. A mere excuse to place an ally in the middle east, and an excuse to complete the expulsion and destruction of the European Jew. The Zionist Jew is more than complicit in this, they actively seek the destruction and assimilation of all other Jews.

Many fail to realize, and largely because of Israel, that Jews are not inherently white, Ashkenazi, European-descended people. Our faith and culture has an immense variety that is spread all across the globe. Jewishness, in population and volume of culture, exists more so outside of Israel than within it. Israel is for a very specific kind of Jew. The kind that lets Yiddish die, that attaches themselves to European things, that makes themselves and their practices as white as possible.

And they have the nerve, the fucking belligerent GALL, to frame themselves as the necessary saviors of our people. To the Zionist, questioning Israel is to question Jewishness itself. They bake adoration for the colonial machine into their very prayers, and push them on us even as children. To *not* oppress, to *not* kill, to *not* genocide, is to invite death. This is the core of fascistic thought, of course. "Kill them before they kill us." And they KNOW this too, they really do. The truth of that irony does not matter, because as is true for all fascists, the truth itself does not matter to them. They wanted this, they wanted this even before the British saw it in their best interest to give them the land. Any excuse to RETVRN, as the neo-nazis say of Rome, or the German Empire, or whatever the fuck stupid country they want to poorly animate the corpse of. Some select Zionists even *sided with the fucking Nazis* in agreement they should abandon Europe to colonize Palestine. (Haavara Agreement)

My people have proved time and time and time again you don't need a nation state to have an enduring culture. We have protected ourselves for thousands of years without the help of these spiteful, doom-saying maniacs. I was going to post something like this on Passover, but that would be hypocritical. The state of Israel doesn't actually have shit to do with Jewishness. שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְה Vi tsu derleb ikh im shoyn tsu bagrobn. [my best translation] Hear Israel (beginning of a prayer in Hebrew) I should outlive him long enough to bury him. (an old Yiddish curse)

Free Palestine. Donate what you can, they need it right now.

[sophiamcdougall]

You're a reasonably informed person on the internet. You've experienced things like no longer being able to get files off an old storage device, media you've downloaded suddenly going poof, sites and forums with troves full of people's thoughts and ideas vanishing forever. You've heard of cybercrime. You've read articles about lost media. You have at least a basic understanding that digital data is vulnerable, is what I'm saying. I'm guessing that you're also aware that history is, you know... important? And that it's an ongoing study, requiring ... data about how people live? And that it's not just about stanning celebrities that happen to be dead? Congratulations, you are significantly better-informed than the British government! So they're currently like "Oh hai can we destroy all these historical documents pls? To save money? Because we'll digitise them first so it's fine! That'll be easy, cheap and reliable -- right? These wills from the 1850s will totally be fine for another 170 years as a PNG or whatever, yeah? We didn't need to do an impact assesment about this because it's clearly win-win! We'd keep the physical wills of Famous People™ though because Famous People™ actually matter, unlike you plebs. We don't think there are any equalities implications about this, either! Also the only examples of Famous People™ we can think of are all white and rich, only one is a woman and she got famous because of the guy she married. Kisses!"

Yes, this is the same Government that's like "Oh no removing a statue of slave trader is erasing history :(" You have, however, until 23 February 2024 to politely inquire of them what the fuck they are smoking. And they will have to publish a summary of the responses they receive. And it will look kind of bad if the feedback is well-argued, informative and overwhelmingly negative and they go ahead and do it anyway. I currently edit documents including responses to consultations like (but significantly less insane) than this one. Responses do actually matter. I would particularly encourage British people/people based in the UK to do this, but as far as I can see it doesn't say you have to be either. If you are, say, a historian or an archivist, or someone who specialises in digital data do say so and draw on your expertise in your answers. This isn't a question of filling out a form. You have to manually compose an email answering the 12 questions in the consultation paper at the link above. I'll put my own answers under the fold. Note -- I never know if I'm being too rude in these sorts of things. You probably shouldn't be ruder than I have been.

Please do not copy and paste any of this: that would defeat the purpose. This isn't a petition, they need to see a range of individual responses. But it may give you a jumping-off point.

Question 1: Should the current law providing for the inspection of wills be preserved?

Yes. Our ability to understand our shared past is a fundamental aspect of our heritage. It is not possible for any authority to know in advance what future insights they are supporting or impeding by their treatment of material evidence. Safeguarding the historical record for future generations should be considered an extremely important duty.

Question 2: Are there any reforms you would suggest to the current law enabling wills to be inspected?

No.

Question 3: Are there any reasons why the High Court should store original paper will documents on a permanent basis, as opposed to just retaining a digitised copy of that material?

Yes. I am amazed that the recent cyber attack on the British Library, which has effectively paralysed it completely, not been sufficient to answer this question for you.  I also refer you to the fate of the Domesday Project. Digital storage is useful and can help more people access information; however, it is also inherently fragile. Malice, accident, or eventual inevitable obsolescence not merely might occur, but absolutely should be expected. It is ludicrously naive and reflects a truly unpardonable ignorance to assume that information preserved only in digital form is somehow inviolable and safe, or that a physical document once digitised, never need be digitised again..At absolute minimum, it should be understood as certain that at least some of any digital-only archive will eventually be permanently lost. It is not remotely implausible that all of it would be. Preserving the physical documents provides a crucial failsafe. It also allows any errors in reproduction -- also inevitable-- to be, eventually, seen and corrected. Note that maintaining, upgrading and replacing digital infrastructure is not free, easy or reliable. Over the long term, risks to the data concerned can only accumulate.

"Unlike the methods for preserving analog documents that have been honed over millennia, there is no deep precedence to look to regarding the management of digital records. As such, the processing, long-term storage, and distribution potential of archival digital data are highly unresolved issues. [..] the more digital data is migrated, translated, and re-compressed into new formats, the more room there is for information to be lost, be it at the microbit-level of preservation. Any failure to contend with the instability of digital storage mediums, hardware obsolescence, and software obsolescence thus meets a terminal end—the definitive loss of information. The common belief that digital data is safe so long as it is backed up according to the 3-2-1 rule (3 copies on 2 different formats with 1 copy saved off site) belies the fact that it is fundamentally unclear how long digital information can or will remain intact. What is certain is that its unique vulnerabilities do become more pertinent with age."  -- James Boyda, On Loss in the 21st Century: Digital Decay and the Archive, Introduction.

Question 4: Do you agree that after a certain time original paper documents (from 1858 onwards) may be destroyed (other than for famous individuals)? Are there any alternatives, involving the public or private sector, you can suggest to their being destroyed?

Absolutely not. And I would have hoped we were past the "great man" theory of history. Firstly, you do not know which figures will still be considered "famous" in the future and which currently obscure individuals may deserve and eventually receive greater attention. I note that of the three figures you mention here as notable enough to have their wills preserved, all are white, the majority are male (the one woman having achieved fame through marriage) and all were wealthy at the time of their death. Any such approach will certainly cull evidence of the lives of women, people of colour and the poor from the historical record, and send a clear message about whose lives you consider worth remembering.

Secondly, the famous and successsful are only a small part of our history. Understanding the realities that shaped our past and continue to mould our present requires evidence of the lives of so-called "ordinary people"!

Did you even speak to any historians before coming up with this idea?

Entrusting the documents to the private sector would be similarly disastrous. What happens when a private company goes bust or decides that preserving this material is no longer profitable? What reasonable person, confronted with our crumbling privatised water infrastructure, would willingly consign any part of our heritage to a similar fate?

Question 5: Do you agree that there is equivalence between paper and digital copies of wills so that the ECA 2000 can be used?

No. And it raises serious questions about the skill and knowledge base within HMCTS and the government that the very basic concepts of data loss and the digital dark age appear to be unknown to you. I also refer you to the Domesday Project.

Question 6: Are there any other matters directly related to the retention of digital or paper wills that are not covered by the proposed exercise of the powers in the ECA 2000 that you consider are necessary?

Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.

Question 7: If the Government pursues preserving permanently only a digital copy of a will document, should it seek to reform the primary legislation by introducing a Bill or do so under the ECA 2000?

Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.

Question 8: If the Government moves to digital only copies of original will documents, what do you think the retention period for the original paper wills should be? Please give reasons and state what you believe the minimum retention period should be and whether you consider the Government’s suggestion of 25 years to be reasonable.

There is no good version of this plan. The physical documents should be preserved.

Question 9: Do you agree with the principle that wills of famous people should be preserved in the original paper form for historic interest?

This question betrays deep ignorance of what "historic interest" actually is. The study of history is not simply glorified celebrity gossip. If anything, the physical wills of currently famous people could be considered more expendable as it is likely that their contents are so widely diffused as to be relatively "safe", whereas the wills of so-called "ordinary people" will, especially in aggregate, provide insights that have not yet been explored.

Question 10: Do you have any initial suggestions on the criteria which should be adopted for identifying famous/historic figures whose original paper will document should be preserved permanently?

Abandon this entire lamentable plan. As previously discussed, you do not and cannot know who will be considered "famous" in the future, and fame is a profoundly flawed criterion of historical significance.

Question 11: Do you agree that the Probate Registries should only permanently retain wills and codicils from the documents submitted in support of a probate application? Please explain, if setting out the case for retention of any other documents.

No, all the documents should be preserved indefinitely.

Question 12: Do you agree that we have correctly identified the range and extent of the equalities impacts under each of these proposals set out in this consultation? Please give reasons and supply evidence of further equalities impacts as appropriate.

No. You appear to have neglected equalities impacts entirely. As discussed, in your drive to prioritise "famous people", your plan will certainly prioritise the white, wealthy and mostly the male, as your "Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin and Princess Diana" examples amply indicate. This plan will create a two-tier system where evidence of the lives of the privileged is carefully preserved while information regarding people of colour, women, the working class and other disadvantaged groups is disproportionately abandoned to digital decay and eventual loss. Current and future historians from, or specialising in the history of minority groups will be especially impoverished by this.