I'm Alan Olver and this is Clear and Vivid. Conversations about connecting and communicating.

One of these birds could rip your face off. I mean they have powerful claws and they're

strong and the lead bird got within about ten feet of me before it went up and over

the roof of the house. But in about a half a second we looked each other straight in the eye.

It was an incredible kind of communication and after the bird that flown over the house

I was in tears. I was shaking. I think that that luck was almost like they were talking

to me. They were telling me that we're kindred spirits. We've shared this land together.

That's Alan Leitman. He's a physicist who's firmly rooted in the belief that all things

in the universe can be explained in terms of matter without the need to invoke a God or spirits.

But experiences like is encounter with an adolescent osprey. Moments that seemed beyond rational

explanation have led him to write a book called The Transcendent Brain, Spirituality in the Age of Science.

This is going to be great talking with you because you're such an unusual and intriguing person.

Not only are you highly respected scientists, you're a very successful novelist. Those

two things don't usually go together. Well thank you. You're pretty unusual as well.

Well then there should be a great conversation. The other thing that's intriguing is along with

your expertise about black holes and what goes on in them and outside them and other really dense

phenomena. You're very intrigued and interested in the transcendent experience.

And I'd like to know more about how you view that. The great example of the transcendent experience

that you've had is where you live on an island off the coast of Maine. Is that right? That's right.

So you can only get to your island by boat. That's right. And one night you were on the boat and

you were alone and what happened? Well it was after midnight and I was coming back to the island

and it was a very clear night and the stars were out and I decided to

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