I was about 18 at the time (nearly 50 years ago for the ageists ;-) and, under hypnosis, was asked to identify an object that had earlier (without my being present) been wrapped and placed in a cardboard box. I was allowed to touch the box but not move it. First guess of what was inside the box was a toy car (it wasn’t a toy car, but the box had once contained a real automobile part). Second guess was ‘descriptive’ more than actually saying what the object was. The description, word-for-word, was that the object was, “Pear-shaped but flat, and not ‘round’ like a real pear. It was also hard, grey and smooth (but not very smooth.)”

That was it as far as identifying the object in the box. The ‘count out’ from the hypnotic state was slowly delivered by the hypnotist - 10, 9, 8... Then something weird happened. A very real sensation of being in a ‘different place’. I was standing on a hilltop with another man. The wind was blowing through our long hair. I was holding whatever was in the box above my shoulder and looking out across rolling downland. The count out continued... 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. A click of the hypnotist's fingers and I was ‘back’ and feeling a bit disorientated.

The box was opened. Inside was a ‘pear-shaped’ Neolithic axe head.

I’m not saying I was reliving a past life experience; if we believe in telepathy I might have been picking up thoughts from the person who had placed the axe in the box, or perhaps picking up something from the axe itself. I don’t know, but the story has a postscript. Years later I found myself standing on Waden Hill (just outside Avebury for those who don’t know it) with my brother. The wind was blowing through our hair as we looked out towards West Kennet Long Barrow. The feeling at the time wasn’t quite one of deja vue, more one of a circle being completed... I’ve had similar feelings in circumstances different to that one - almost like having a situation ‘presented’ again because I couldn’t/didn’t work it out correctly the first time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an atheist through-and-through but, the concept of the soul (if not its transmigration) is one shared by most, if not all, religions and (for me at least) it provides a possible explanation of things presently beyond our understanding.

So, though I might come over as being hyper-sceptical of the ‘unknown’ and ‘unproven’ I’m not. The above experience, along with one other, allows for the possibility of multiple unknown ‘whatever's’ in my philosophy - I’m just not that keen on banging on about them.