I have a first hand experience to share on this topic: Someone posted that some people apparently have memories of past lives. I'm one of those. I've had strange haunting memories of a specific foreign life that sometimes felt more vivid and important than my current life. Memories of emotions, visuals among other things. So...
I did a regression hypnosis session in which I saw the scene of death of my body clear as day (actually it was night). I am capable of trance and use the trance state for remote viewing sessions as well. But this hypnosis trance state was quite deep for my standards.
The interesting part was this: I was hovering above the scene and the body was lifeless. At first I couldn't sense what was going on in the scene, because I felt very associated with the body even though it wasn't moving. I didn't question the third person perspective. As it went on, I realized my spatial detachment from the body, but couldn't and didn't want to let go. There was enormous release of sadness in this scene and I felt waves of sadness and hopelessness overcome my entire being. The facilitator guided me through this scene and was trying to establish "what happened next". The interesting thing is, nothing happened! I just stayed there in this state of sadness and I didn't want to get over the emotions of the moment. I was weeping buckets. There was a strange enjoyment of this sadness and the tragedy of the scene! I find this a very interesting clue. It was pure and deep.
What I found was that these emotions were so all-encompassing that I couldn't really move from there and I didn't know where to go because there was just this scene, nothing else. The facilitator tried a few times to move me from this scene but it wasn't easy. Suddenly I realized that there was someone "waiting" for me. I didn't see any light, but I did see a sphere that was hovering there, waiting. I started to know that I would have to leave this scene eventually.
After this, the session took an interesting turn. As I was trying to perceive what I did next, I noticed how annoyed I was that things had occurred this way, with the death and all the things I'd done wrong in that life. I felt stuck in between that life and this state of just being dead and still perceiving the scene. Then I got this sense of "Shit, now you're stuck here. You're gonna have to go recycle and even things out." I somehow felt that it was optional, but I also didn't see any other way to progress from that scene. I really wanted to know what was "beyond", but couldn't perceive anything else. It was really frustrating. I reluctantly somehow engaged with "those guys".
Now I'm here. Another guy. Another life and I realize many things:
Once you're dead, you can't develop anymore. So you better develop to the highest you can, while alive. The circumstances of death are crucial. Be ready for death, and accepting of it, forgive everyone including, or mostly yourself. This is very difficult. I felt deep guilt and knowing that I had to "make things right." You must be emotionally and mentally balanced and you must ready to let everything go. If you lack (don't remember) the bigger picture, then I think you're likely going to self-entrap into the next cycle.
Whether this whole process is evil or not, I don't know! Maybe it's for our own good. I think the prison is not what's outside of it when we die, it's inside the illusion. It's how the system makes us believe things are. It's how it twists and turns us to react emotionally. It disfigures our perfect being and hides the truth from us as much as it can in the unseen. I'm doing everything I can to develop myself this time, and have been doing this even before knowing anything about that, so it feels like a preselected tendency. Next time I see "those guys" I don't yet know what I'm going to do, but it will have to do with a lot of love and gratefulness. They just seem to be doing their job whether it's good or bad.
I hope this helps someone.