David wants to be a hero.

 

Per Lachaise, Paris

Reportedly David's last words were "David wants to be a hero." This after courting someone who spent his last moments with him - perhaps finding Ayla, the "true love" of this life (and perhaps other lifetimes.) 

We tend to think of things in terms of short, long - but when we're outside of time - on the flipside, there is little discussion of short or long, there's just that feeling of connectedness.  Reportedly, a connection to our loved ones and to those we've loved before, and continue to love. 

I can't explain, or try to explain why David's journey was so relatively short - but if you consider for a moment what thousands have said about the journey (in Flipside: A Tourist's Guide On How To Navigate the Afterlife​ or It's a Wonderful Afterlife: Further Adventures in the...​) that it might be true - that we don't die, that we're here for a specific reason, that reason may only be known to our higher self, to our close loved ones, that others can't fully understand until they too are no longer on the planet - but to consider for a moment that the bonds between us don't fade, don't disappear, and are always with us. 

And those accounts, that data, that research has been reported by many hospice care people, by case workers with Alzheimer patients (as recounted in Dr. Bruce Greyson's youtube talk "Is Consciousnes Produced by the Brain?") that just moments, sometimes hours or days prior to our passing, the filter seems to disappear, and people act like they're greeted by loved ones who've passed, are able to say goodbye to loved ones or are able to speak of themselves in the third person as he does here; "David," David said to his parents "wants to be a hero."  
And David... is a hero.  Continues to be a hero. Applause for his difficult journey, his difficult choice in playing this short but intense role.  In nearly every session of deep hypnosis that I've filmed - I've filmed 25 so far - at some point, the person is asked "where would you (your spirit, or energy or soul) like to go now?" and they inevitably say - on camera - "I want to go home."  

At first my brain scrambled for the meaning of what that meant - did they mean somewhere else on the planet? (or in my own case of filming a session, when I said it, was I thinking of my hometown?) I was startled to realize (in my case as well) that by "home" they all meant another place that's not here.  "Home."  The place that we all know and love, and feel the most happy and comfortable with... a place of unconditional love - a place that no one on the planet can agree is exactly the same - even twins - because we have our own perspective - but the word was used every time it was asked, and I eventually understood what they meant.  Call it heaven. Call it the other realm. Call it backstage.  But call it what it is.  It ain't here.  

Godspeed David, and condolences for his loved ones who no longer get to communicate with him on a daily basis, and Ayla as well.  His soul mate.  She will see him again. (at least that's what the research consistenly shows). 

Not a belief or a philosophy or a religious concept. I'm only citing the data.  It's what people say under deep hypnosis, its what they say after a near death experience, sometimes after a profound consciousness altering event.  It's consistent, and as I've proven in my research, replicable with just about anyone. Or at least 25 so far. Condolences to his folks.  

I would only add - pay attention to anyone who says they "felt his presence" or they experience a "dream" about him that seems "vivid."  These accounts are often found in the research.  And my advice is to not judge them, but honor them for the possibility that they might actually be his way of letting you know he's okay, he's still with you, and always will be.

8-Year-Old Boy Who Found 'True Love' While Facing Terminal Cancer Dies 'Surrounded by Love,' His Mom Says

staff@people.com (Tiare Dunlap)

People

David and Ayla

8-Year-Old Boy Who Found 'True Love' While Facing Terminal Cancer Dies 'Surrounded by Love,' His Mom Says

David Spisak, an 8-year-old boy who found his 'true love' while contending with terminal cancer, has died.

"Our little man's last moments were laying with his mommy and daddy in the middle of the night, with a house full of family, friends and loved ones after days of being surrounded by love," his mom, Amber Spisak, wrote in a Facebook group where she chronicled the young boy's cancer battle.

"This day was supposed to come about 9-10 months ago, but David just wasn't done living yet, so he made his own timeline and defied the rules," the post continued. "The almost 7 years of cancer were so very hard, but nothing like the last few days."

Amber wrote that the last clear thing the family heard the young boy from Chesapeake, Virginia say was. "David wants to be a hero."

"I'm not ready to say things happen for a reason or a message of rainbows and sunshine just yet, but our baby boy was a fighter, a beautiful soul, a force to be reckoned with and of all the things, he is most definitely a hero," she continued.

David was diagnosed with leukemia at age two. After undergoing extensive chemotherapy and receiving two transplants, David beat cancer three times. Then, in March, his cancer returned.

Facing this fourth diagnosis, David's parents made the decision to stop David's treatments and allow him to live a normal life away from hospitals and painful procedures.

Doctors predicted that without treatment, David would only live for four to six weeks, but months passed, and David began to look better. When he returned to school to start second grade in September, he met a girl who captured his heart.

He told his parents he had a "crush" on 7-year-old Ayla Andrews, a girl from art class.

"In art class, I told her I liked her and she just had a surprised face so we started dating," David told WTKR in November.

When David became too sick to attend school, Amber found notes from Ayla saying that she loved and missed him. So she reached out to Ayla's mom to plan a date to lift her son's spirits.

David brought Ayla a teddy bear and roses, and she pushed him around in his wheelchair, helped him bowl and shared pizza with him.

"She's definitely had an impact on his spirit, and I haven't seen this side of him in a long time," Amber told WTKR.

She added, "The best part was watching the way they just needed to be close to each other and their conversation never got shy or quiet. That was all they needed to be happy."

At the end of the date, David stood up from his wheelchair and walked for the first time in a month.

"He was just so determined for her, he really pushed himself for her," Amber told ABC News. "Once we realized that this wasn't the typical elementary school crush, once we saw this heartfelt connection that they have, we were so happy that she came into his life and that he came to her life for some reason."

Einstein actually was an Einstein

Einstein actually was an Einstein. 

Another of his theories proven accurate, 100 years after he predicted it. Gravitational waves exist. Think of the universe as one giant pool of water; a wave from an event moves out and through the universe like ripples in a pond. But beyond that, like molecules of water, we too may be interconnected. When a wave of positivity, or a wave of negativity moves our way, we feel it, we adjust to it; we may not be conscious of it, but it's there. "There's a Nobel in this discovery" indeed. 

Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted something called gravitational waves. Science has tried to prove their...

Posted by The Guardian on Thursday, February 11, 2016

from the BBC:

Einstein's gravitational waves 'seen' from black holes

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

Scientists are claiming a stunning discovery in their quest to fully understand gravity.

They have observed the warping of space-time generated by the collision of two black holes more than a billion light-years from Earth.
The international team says the first detection of these gravitational waves will usher in a new era for astronomy. 

It is the culmination of decades of searching and could ultimately offer a window on the Big Bang. The research, by the Ligo Collaboration, has been published today in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The collaboration operates a number of labs around the world that fire lasers through long tunnels, trying to sense ripples in the fabric of space-time. Expected signals are extremely subtle, and disturb the machines, known as interferometers, by just fractions of the width of an atom. But the black hole merger was picked up by two widely separated LIGO facilities in the US.

"We have detected gravitational waves," David Reitze, executive director of the Ligo project, told journalists at a news conference in Washington DC. "It's the first time the Universe has spoken to us through gravitational waves. Up until now, we've been deaf."

Prof Karsten Danzmann, from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany, is a European leader on the collaboration.He said the detection was one of the most important developments in science since the discovery of the Higgs particle, and on a par with the determination of the structure of DNA.

"There is a Nobel Prize in it - there is no doubt," he told the BBC.
"It is the first ever direct detection of gravitational waves; it's the first ever direct detection of black holes and it is a confirmation of General Relativity because the property of these black holes agrees exactly with what Einstein predicted almost exactly 100 years ago."

---

Ripples in the fabric of space-time

• Gravitational waves are prediction of the Theory of General Relativity
• Their existence has been inferred by science but only now directly detected
• They are ripples in the fabric of space and time produced by violent events
• Accelerating masses will produce waves that propagate at the speed of light
• Detectable sources ought to include merging black holes and neutron stars
• LIGO fires lasers into long, L-shaped tunnels; the waves disturb the light
• Detecting the waves opens up the Universe to completely new investigations

---

That view was reinforced by Professor Stephen Hawking, who is an expert on black holes. Speaking exclusively to BBC News he said he believed that the detection marked a moment in scientific history.

"Gravitational waves provide a completely new way at looking at the Universe. The ability to detect them has the potential to revolutionise astronomy. This discovery is the first detection of a black hole binary system and the first observation of black holes merging," he said.

"Apart from testing (Albert Einstein's theory of) General Relativity, we could hope to see black holes through the history of the Universe. We may even see relics of the very early Universe during the Big Bang at some of the most extreme energies possible."Team member Prof Gabriela González, Louisiana State University said: "We have discovered gravitational waves from the merger of black holes. It's been a very long road, but this is just the beginning.

"Now that we have the detectors to see these systems, now that we know binary black holes are out there, we'll begin listening to the Universe. "

The Ligo laser interferometers in Hanford, in Washington, and Livingstone, in Louisiana, were only recently refurbished and had just come back online when they sensed the signal from the collision. 

Prof Stephen Hawking: "This provides a completely new way of looking at the universe."

Prof Sheila Rowan, who is one of the lead UK researchers involved in the project, said that the first detection of gravitational waves was just the start of a "terrifically exciting" journey.

"The fact that we are sitting here on Earth feeling the actual fabric of the Universe stretch and compress slightly due to the merger of black holes that occurred just over a billion years ago - I think that's phenomenal. It's amazing that when we first turned on our detectors, the Universe was ready and waiting to say 'hello'," the Glasgow University scientist told the BBC.

Being able to detect gravitational waves enables astronomers finally to probe what they call "dark Universe" - the majority part of the cosmos that is invisible to the light telescopes in use today.

Perfect probe

Not only will they be able to investigate black holes and strange objects known as neutron stars (giant suns that have collapsed to the size of cities), they should also be able to "look" much deeper into the Universe - and thus farther back in time. It may even be possible eventually to sense the moment of the Big Bang.

"Gravitational waves go through everything. They are hardly affected by what they pass through, and that means that they are perfect messengers," said Prof Bernard Schutz, from Cardiff University, UK.

"The information carried on the gravitational wave is exactly the same as when the system sent it out; and that is unusual in astronomy. We can't see light from whole regions of our own galaxy because of the dust that is in the way, and we can't see the early part of the Big Bang because the Universe was opaque to light earlier than a certain time.

"With gravitational waves, we do expect eventually to see the Big Bang itself," he told the BBC.

In addition, the study of gravitational waves may ultimately help scientists in their quest to solve some of the biggest problems in physics, such as the unification of forces, linking quantum theory with gravity.

At the moment, the General Relativity describes the cosmos on the largest scales tremendously well, but it is to quantum ideas that we resort when talking about the smallest interactions. Being able to study places in the Universe where gravity is extreme, such as at black holes, may open a path to new, more complete thinking on these issues.

---

• A laser is fed into the machine and its beam is split along two paths
• The separate paths bounce back and forth between damped mirrors
• Eventually, the two light parts are recombined and sent to a detector
• Gravitational waves passing through the lab should disturb the set-up
• Theory holds they should very subtly stretch and squeeze its space
• This ought to show itself as a change in the lengths of the light arms (green)
• The photodetector captures this signal in the recombined beam

---

Scientists have sought experimental evidence for gravitational waves for more than 40 years. 

Einstein himself actually thought a detection might be beyond the reach of technology. 

His theory of General Relativity suggests that objects such as stars and planets can warp space around them - in the same way that a billiard ball creates a dip when placed on a thin, stretched, rubber sheet. 

Gravity is a consequence of that distortion - objects will be attracted to the warped space in the same way that a pea will fall in to the dip created by the billiard ball.

Inspirational moment

Einstein predicted that if the gravity in an area was changed suddenly - by an exploding star, say - waves of gravitational energy would ripple across the Universe at light-speed, stretching and squeezing space as they travelled. 

Although a fantastically small effect, modern technology has now risen to the challenge.

Much of the R&D work for the Washington and Louisiana machines was done at Europe's smaller GEO600 interferometer in Hannover.

"I think it's phenomenal to be able to build an instrument capable of measuring [gravitational waves]," said Prof Rowan. 

"It is hugely exciting for a whole generation of young people coming along, because these kinds of observations and this real pushing back of the frontiers is really what inspires a lot of young people to get into science and engineering."

Off the port bow.

WHY IT MATTERS.

The Universe is not composed how we thought it was:Finite objects moving through space.

It actually is more like a pool.

And gravity - is the relation between objects in that pool.  

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY:

We are all molecules in the pool.  So what happens on one side of the pool effects the other side of the pool.  We are energy. The pool is composed of energy. So if one side of the pool has a bad attitude, it affects our side of the pool.

But we can combat that bad attitude with our own tool of choice: consciousness.  We can affect the rest of the pool by focusing our energy into something that's the opposite of the bad attitude.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

If Tonglen - the Tibetan meditation studied by Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin is an actual cure or can alleviate the symptoms of depression - THAT MEANS that by mental imagining, we can CHANGE OUR CONSCIOUSNESS.

Let me say that again.

By using a meditation - and Tonglen is the one that was studied, we can alter the physical structure of our brain - specifically the amgydala, which Davidson's study showed "even one session" of meditation could change the shape of this small part of the brain that retains depression.

So if mental processes can change the shape of the amygdala - then mental processes can affect other areas of the body.

Like a wave.

And by extension - even though THERE'S NO EVIDENCE that mental processes - meditation, etc change those things on the outside of the body, it follows that like a ripple, or like a wave, it eventually will change the energy outside of the brain.

So - meditating on the good health of someone else (a Tonglen concept) helps us... and there's a possibility that it MIGHT help someone else.

The universe is a big pool of energy.

Which is exactly what I saw when I had my own "out of body" experience.  I don't call it a near death experience because I was lying in my bed - I had an awful cold, so I don't think I died, but here is what happened to my consciousness. (It's not unlike what people experience in near death observations, but was years prior to my Flipside research)

As I was drifting off to sleep I felt myself DISSOLVE.

I was conscious of myself dissolving into a SEA OF ATOMS.  I can only call it that, because I was aware of myself turning into a shimmering blob of light - and it was golden.  And it was like a thousand fireflies in my mind, and a tingling sensation of utter joy and connectedness.  Overwhelming that I was going to faint from the joy.

But I consciously thought "I need to expore this! What is this?"  So my conscious mind still existed within this framework to allow me to want to explore.  And I willed myself to continue to be "awake" as it took effort not to pass out.  I saw this eddy of golden light move and dissipate - and then as if looking from one end of a pool, I saw that there was this giant vast sea of energy all around me.  

And then as if looking out into the vast pool of light, I saw this small cloud of dark or gray light coming towards me - and instantly understood that to be a small blot of negativity - coming my way.  I was aware that this was how "negative thoughts" - directed at me, or directed somehow towards me find their way into your consciousness.

But as I saw the gray light coming towards me, instead of fear, (which was my first option, as in "oh no, what's this?") I chose to think a positive thought... and it was right out of a special effects moment - I thought "I can defeat that negativity with a burst of positive thought" - and all the atoms of water in this vast pool around me suddenly began to glow, and rushed out like a giant colored pool of ink - a golden light that engulfed and dissipated the dark light - as far as the eye could see.

The next thing I observed is that I was "outside of time."  I observed that I was looking back at the earth from a perspective outside of it - and saw it as a circular time frame.  So that if I put my finger in one side of the globe, it might be in the 8th century, and if I put my finger on the other side, it might be yesterday - and so therefore I could be simultaneously in both places at once.  Because I was outside of time.

Then I observed that wherever there was a photograph of myself - of Richard - no matter what age, no matter where on the planet, I could easily move to that object.  As if the photo itself had captured my essence, or time - like a piece of a hologram contains all the elements of the larger picture - and I found myself visiting an attic of a relative where a box of photos existed with myself in them, and then into someone's wallet where there existed a photo of us in our youth, etc...

So wherever a photograph existed of myself it was like a portal - I could more easily access it because it contained a reference point for me to access.

If this vision is accurate, then I would recommend whenever you want to speak to a loved one who is not longer on the planet, to take out a photograph of them and address it in present tense.  Ask a question, or make a comment and see if perhaps they are able to respond. Either with the first thought that comes into your mind, or by some event that happens during the day, or coming week that reminds you of something about that person.

It's their way of responding.

And finally, ask them a question you don't know the answer to.  (I always ask for lottery numbers, and I almost always get a laugh). But some detail in your life that only this person would know - and will prove that they not only still exist, but are aware of what you're wrestling with.

A long way of saying, "Thanks Albert!"

 What's funny is that it relates to this video that I happened to catch the other day. (two black holes traveling through the universe, that collide)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnbJEg9r1o8

Flipside Book Talks playlist

For y'all who might be interested in my various book talks.

Enjoy!!!

Fractals and the Happiest Man Alive

Scientists find evidence of mathematical structures in classic books

Researchers at Poland’s Institute of Nuclear Physics found complex ‘fractal’ patterning of sentences in literature, particularly in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, which resemble ‘ideal’ maths seen in nature

James Joyce

 James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake has been described as many things, from a masterpiece to unreadable nonsense. But it is also, according to scientists at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Poland, almost indistinguishable in its structure from a purely mathematical multifractal.

The academics put more than 100 works of world literature, by authors from Charles Dickens to Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas, Thomas Mann, Umberto Eco and Samuel Beckett, through a detailed statistical analysis. Looking at sentence lengths and how they varied, they found that in an “overwhelming majority” of the studied texts, the correlations in variations of sentence length were governed by the dynamics of a cascade – meaning that their construction is a fractal: a mathematical object in which each fragment, when expanded, has a structure resembling the whole.

 

Fractals are used in science to model structures that contain re-occurring patterns, including snowflakes and galaxies.

“All of the examined works showed self-similarity in terms of organisation of the lengths of sentences. Some were more expressive – here The Ambassadors by Henry James stood out – others to far less of an extreme, as in the case of the French 17th-century romance Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus. However, correlations were evident, and therefore these texts were the construction of a fractal,” said Dr Paweł Oświęcimka from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, one of the authors of the new paper Quantifying Origin and Character of Long-range Correlations in Narrative Texts.
Some works, however, were more mathematically complex than others, with stream-of-consciousness narratives the most complex, comparable to multifractals, or fractals of fractals. Finnegans Wake, the scientists found, was the most complex of all.

I am really one of the greatest engineers, if not the greatest, in the world

James Joyce

“The absolute record in terms of multifractality turned out to be Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. The results of our analysis of this text are virtually indistinguishable from ideal, purely mathematical multifractals,” said Professor Stanisław Drożdż, another author of the paper, which has just been published in the computer science journal Information Sciences.

Photo: IFJ Pan

Multifractal analysis of Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce: the graph shape is virtually indistinguishable from the results for purely mathematical multifractals. The horizontal axis represents the degree of singularity, while the vertical axis shows the spectrum of singularity. Photograph: IFJ PAN

Joyce himself, reported to have said he wrote Finnegans Wake “to keep the critics busy for 300 years”, might have predicted this. In a letter about the novel, Work in Progess as he then knew it, he told Harriet Weaver: “I am really one of the greatest engineers, if not the greatest, in the world besides being a musicmaker, philosophist and heaps of other things. All the engines I know are wrong. Simplicity. I am making an engine with only one wheel. No spokes of course. The wheel is a perfect square. You see what I’m driving at, don’t you? I am awfully solemn about it, mind you, so you must not think it is a silly story about the mouse and the grapes. No, it’s a wheel, I tell the world. And it’s all square.”
The academics write in their paper that: “Studying characteristics of the sentence-length variability in a large corpus of world famous literary texts shows that an appealing and aesthetic optimum … involves self-similar, cascade-like alternations of various lengths of sentences.”

Sequences of sentence lengths (as measured by number of words) in four books, representative of various degrees of cascading character. Photograph: IFJ PAN

“An overwhelming majority of the studied texts simply obey such fractal attributes but especially spectacular in this respect are hypertext-like, ‘stream-of-consciousness’ novels. In addition, they appear to develop structures characteristic of irreducibly interwoven sets of fractals called multifractals.”

The other works most comparable to multifractals, the academics found, were A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar, The USA trilogy by John Dos Passos, The Waves by Virginia Woolf, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño and Joyce’s Ulysses. Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu showed “little correlation” to multifractality, however; nor did Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

The academics note that “fractality of a literary text will in practice never be as perfect as in the world of mathematics”, because a mathematical fractal can be magnified to infinite, while the number of sentences in a book are finite.

“It is not entirely clear whether stream-of-consciousness writing actually reveals the deeper qualities of our consciousness, or rather the imagination of the writers. It is hardly surprising that ascribing a work to a particular genre is, for whatever reason, sometimes subjective,” said Drożdż, suggesting that the scientists’ work “may someday help in a more objective assignment of books to one genre or another”.

Drożdż suggested today that the findings could also be used to posit that writers “uncovered fractals and even multifractals in nature long before scientists”. “Evidently, they (like Joyce) had a kind of intuition, as it happens to great artists, that such a narrative mode best reflects ‘how nature works’ and they properly encoded this into their texts,” he said. “Nature evolves through cascades and thus arranges fractally, and imprints of this we find in the sentence-length variability.”

Eimear McBride, whose multiple award-winning debut novel A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, said she wasn’t taken aback by the results.

“It doesn’t surprise me that works described as “stream of consciousness” appear to be the most fractal. By its nature, such writing is concerned not only with the usual load-bearing aspects of language – content, meaning, aesthetics, etc – but engages with language as the object in itself, using the re-forming of its rules to give the reader a more prismatic understanding of the subject at hand. Given the long-established connection between beauty and symmetry, finding works of literature fractally quantifiable seems perfectly reasonable.”

But she added that she couldn’t “help being somewhat disappointed by the idea that the main upshot of this research may be to make the assigning of genre more straightforward”.

“Surely there are more interesting questions about the how and why of writers’ brains arriving at these complex, but seemingly instinctive, fractals?” she said. “And, given Professor Drożdż’s pretty inarguable contention that it remains unclear whether or not stream-of-consciousness writing does indeed reveal a deeper layer of consciousness, what distance this research may go to explain why some readers believe themselves to be experiencing exactly that while others have the opposite reaction?”

---

So what does this have to do with the Flipside you ask?

A bit hard to digest. But scientists have put the "number of words in a sentence" to measure recurring length in great works of art, and discovered that many are fractals - a mathematical structure that has within it, a repeated sequence. 

In this dense article, they argue that somehow great artists tap into "unconscious" fractals - and call Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" the ultimate in "Stream of consciousness writing." 

Here's the thing. In my "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" research, people talk about seeing "fractals" while under deep hypnosis, and when asked to describe the contents of these "geometric shapes" that appear to follow people around, one claimed they were like "external hard drives that contain all the memories of our previous lifetimes." 

Another claimed they contain "ancient information." And now here is the Guardian quoting Polish scientists saying that fractals are not only inherent in nature (snowflakes) but also in art. As if we have the code of fractal creation somewhere in our consciousness, we may not be aware of it, but it appears in our art. 

 Next up would be to examine other works of art to see if this pattern repeats itself. "What's the point?" you might ask? It's that consciousness isn't confined to the brain. And if that's true, then everything we think we know about the planet is off, wrong. A fundamental rethink is in order. Don't shoot the messenger. A fractal is defined as: a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation."

Turns out that we too are working within the fractal universe, but just aren't aware of it.

Until now.

Here's an interesting headline, that I've been mentioning in all of my books:

A 69-year-old monk who scientists call the 'world's happiest man' says the secret to being happy takes just 15 minutes a day

• Alyson Shontell Jan. 27, 2016, 8:31 

Follow Business Insider:

Matthieu Ricard

Matthieu Ricard, the world's happiest man.

 

Who is the happiest man in the world? If you Google it, the name "Matthieu Ricard" pops up.

Matthieu Ricard, 69, is a Tibetan Buddhist monk originally from France who has been called "the world's happiest man."
That's because he participated in a 12-year brain study on meditation and compassion led by a neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin, Richard Davidson.

Davidson hooked up Ricard's head to 256 sensors and found that when Ricard was meditating on compassion his mind was unusually light.

Simple Capacity details the findings:

The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves – those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory – ‘never reported before in the neuroscience literature’, Davidson said. The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, allowing him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity.

Ricard, who says he sometimes meditates for entire days without getting bored, admits he's a generally happy person (although he feels his "happiest man" title is a media-driven overstatement).
He spoke with Business Insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Here's his advice for how to be happy.

Stop thinking 'me, me, me'

To Ricard, the answer comes down to altruism. The reason is that, thinking about yourself and how to make things better for yourself all the time is exhausting and stressful, and it ultimately leads to unhappiness.

"It's not the moral ground," Ricard says. "It's simply that me, me, me all day long is very stuffy. And it's quite miserable, because you instrumentalize the whole world as a threat, or as a potential sort of interest [to yourself]."

If you want to be happy, Ricard says you should strive to be "benevolent," which will not only make you feel better but also make others like you more.

That's not to say you should let other people take advantage of you, Ricard warns, but you should generally strive to be kind within reason.

"If your mind is filled with benevolence, you know, the passion and solidarity ... this is a very healthy state of mind that is conducive to flourishing," Ricard says. "So you, yourself, are in a much better mental state. Your body will be healthier, so it has been shown. And also, people will perceive it as something nice."

That all sounds great in theory, but how does a person actually become altruistic and benevolent and not let selfish thoughts creep in?

Start training your mind like you'd train to run a marathon

Ricard believes everyone has the ability to have a lighter mind because there's a potential for goodness in every human being (unless you're, say, a serial killer, and there's something actually chemically abnormal going on with your brain).

But like a marathon runner who needs to train before he or she can run 26.2 miles, people who want to be happier need to train their minds. Ricard's preferred way of training his is meditation:

"With mental training, we can always bring [our level of happiness] to a different level. It's like running. If I train, I might run a marathon. I might not become an Olympic champion, but there is a huge difference between training and not training. So why should that not apply to the mind? ... There is a view that benevolence, attention, emotional balance and resilience are skills that can be trained. So if you put them all together, you could say that happiness is a skill that can be trained.

OK, so how does one train their mind to be happier?

Just spend 15 continuous minutes a day thinking happy thoughts

Start by thinking happy thoughts for 10 to 15 minutes a day, Ricard says. Typically when we experience feelings of happiness and love, it's fleeting and then something else happens, and we move on to the next thought. Instead, concentrate on not letting your mind get distracted, and keep focused on the positive emotions for the next stretch of time.

And if you do that training every day, even just two weeks later you can feel positive mental results. And if you practice that for 50 years like Ricard has, you can become a happiness pro too. That's backed up by neuroscientists, by the way. Davidson found in his study that even 20 minutes of daily meditation can make people much happier overall.
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I asked Richard Davidson what specific meditation he used in the epic Univ of Wisconsin study. 

"Tonglen" he told me. "But a non specific version." Meaning instead of the traditional Tibetan Buddhist meditation (paraphrasing) where you imagine a person who is ill and then you "call upon the healing light of the universe" to draw the illness (anger, sickness, rage) from them into you, and as it comes into you, you transform it into healing energy and breathe that energy back into them - instead of visualizing a person, the monks visualized the planet as a sick patient. 

So focusing on losing the word "me" "mine" and "I" is one way of eliminating self focus, but the other way is to actually think of people you love (or don't love, depending) who are in need of a cure, and you visualize yourself helping to facilitate that cure. The point is simple; Science proves that by doing so you can "cure or eliminate symptoms of depression" in yourself. 

There's no evidence that the meditation cures or helps the other person, (or prayer for that matter, but it can't hurt) but there is science that absolutely proves that it can cure depression. Literally "loving your neighbor as yourself" affects the amygdala, the part of the brain where depression resides. 

Davidson says that even "one session of meditation" (or tonglen) can change the physical shape of the amygdala. Should be included/required in every doctor's kit bag; every school yard; ten minutes a day cures or alleviates symptoms of depression (and eventually replaces medications involved with amygdala suppression (SSRI drugs like zoloft and prozac) which as we know, in some people, some children, have dangerous side effects (suicide/violent acts). 

 Let me say it again. Ten minutes a day. Cure (or alleviate symptoms of) depression. Not a fad. Not a religion. Not a philosophy. It's free. It's science. It's data with proven results. 

("Is this mic on?")

A sunset from a year ago....

An old sunset from a year ago. 

Does a foto capture a slice of time the way a piece of a hologram carries all the info of the object? 

If so, everything in a foto still exists, just have to figure out a way to access it, or tune ourselves to it. Virtual reality may be useful, using the senses to recreate an experience, or retain info from a place or person. 

If they still exist, then creating an environment they could access would be key to hearing, seeing them. That is, a field where those outside of time could revisit old information... or loved ones. 

My two cents.