We are not in the Mud Universe at this time (although many of you may have visited there briefly). But we do seem to be in some sort of a local prison within the physical (space opera) universe.
Although this planet may have had some good times, it is a copy of the original Earth and therefore tends to be selected for whatever nefarious deeds are required by the local space empires. Its recent use as a prison planet is probably the result of a war, with the soldiers of a captured army being dumped here. It might also have its compliment of political prisoners, revolutionaries, and real criminals. It has previously been used for mass implanting on the same basis of being a copy of the original Earth.
The prison machinery has to be elaborate enough to keep the prisoners from simply reincarnating back in normal society and starting to raise hell.
Advanced technology allows the manipulation of multiple three dimensional spaces in a four dimensional framework. The entire solar system (out to about 1.3 light-years) is handled in this way (there is a set of 12 stations, sort of like the zodiac, surrounding the solar system at that distance).
The entire structure (this solar system) has been copied sideways in a 4th dimensional direction to form a "heavenly plane" on one side of us and a "hell plane" on the other. These are not very thick in a 4D sense and therefore are a bit ethereal giving them a bit of an "astral" (spirit-like) quality. They are like positive and negative plates between which our reality is suspended. Earth as we know it is very thick (thousands of layers) along the 4D axis with a dead spot in the center that acts like a mirror. What we normally see is in this mirror which is reflecting the thousands of "real" copies to either side. One of the reasons you can't grab the things you see with your thoughts is that there really is nothing where you are looking. You have to reach in funny directions to grab an object with your mind and move it around.
Don't get all religious about the heaven and hell planes at the far edges of the prison. This is like painting the top floor of one of our penitentiaries and fixing it up to look like heaven according to legends remaining from the magic universe. Similarly, we could fix up the basement to look like hell. Then we give the guards costumes as angels or devils. The best prisoners are given an occasional day in heaven and the real troublemakers are occasionally thrown into hell. But its all part of the prison machinery and the supposed angels and devils are all really guards who work together to keep the convicts confused and under control. The guards might play good/evil type games to keep themselves amused, but they are basically guards and they never really loose sight of that fact.
With the prisoners so horribly conditioned and brainwiped between lives, there is not much danger of a prison revolt. But there is also the possibility that the prison might collapse. If anything were to destroy the Earth, they would suddenly have far too many people on their hands and at least some would escape out into the galaxy at large. So they must protect the world from destruction. And yet they must leave us with advanced scientific knowledge to support the ever growing numbers of prisoners. They encouraged a scientific revolution so that the population could expand and now they have the constant difficulty of our blowing ourselves up and destroying the world in various ways.
But there is a technical solution to this given the ability to manipulate 3 dimensional spaces in 4 dimensions. You can store copies of the 3D space sideways along the 4th axis. Imagine that we are living on a flat sheet of paper. The paper changes constantly, but occasionally someone makes a xerox copy of the page. If the paper ever catches fire and burns up, they pull the last xerox out of the file and everything goes on from there. You will see the same thing if you play a computer video game that you can save and restore. If the game goes very badly, you can always go back to a previous copy. If you try this, you will also notice that after restoring an earlier copy of the game, you have some knowledge of the "future" even though things will go slightly differently. This is the real explanation of "deja vu" (remembering the future when it happens again).
One recent example was in 1963 when president Richard M. Nixon launched a nuclear war that destroyed the planet. As we all began dying in droves, the prison machinery was used to restore a copy of the Earth taken in 1957. We were all conditioned to go back to what we were doing in 1957 and life picks up with a second pass through 1957 to 1963. Of course they intervene slightly and Kennedy is elected by the barest margin. Since he begins introducing major changes and because everyone unconsciously expects something bad to happen in 1963 anyway, he is assassinated and things begin to settle back down to their normal course. Nixon even gets to be president later with less ill effects.
These "backup" copies of the earth appear to be taken every 5 years in February of the years ending in either a 2 or a 7 (i.e.. 1952, 1957, 1962, etc.).
When they restore and earlier version, they don't like to back up too far because they have the problem of the growing population (as more prisoners are added). Pushing earth time back too far gives them a host of newer prisoners who have noplace to go. Small numbers can be handled by using animal bodies for a brief time, but large numbers require setting up "holding tanks" on yet another copy of the earth further sideways along the 4D axis. This gives us a bunch of weird "preternatural" earths that some people will have experienced just before birth (and right after the previous time they died in this lifetime).
As you can see, this makes a terrible jumble of one's history. Nobody in their right mind, catching a halfway glimpse of the truth, would believe it, because things are not in the simple logical order that you would expect. You wonder why his recollection of Christmas 1957 doesn't match the facts? Maybe he's recalling a different time that he lived through 1957. Does he remember a funny incident when there seemed to be old steam boilered fire engines on the streets of modern New York, well that's a much earlier pass through the 1950s and things were slightly different. We have been reliving the 20th century for quite a long time.
A person's actual experience might include quite a few reincarnations on earth. But he might have lived through the last one or two incarnations a large number of times and he might even have another incarnation "up in the future" that he's been through a couple times as well. And in between, there might be visits to heavens, hells, pre-birth worlds, and even a few stints where he was forced to work in the between lives administrative area to keep this whole complex show on the road. Now mix in tons of heavy conditioning to keep him confused as all hell, and you have a true picture of today's human being here on Earth.
This paints a pretty depressing picture. But its no more than frantic hand waving meant to keep a god so confused and distracted that he wouldn't remember who he is or what he can do.