This is definitely one of the most interesting theories I have come across recently. According to some versions of the Prison Planet hypothesis, our galaxy is abundant with advanced sapient life, and that the sentient beings of the Milky Way are part of a Galactic Confederation similar to the United Nations we have here on Earth. The Galactic Federation noticed that one of the species (we Homo Sapiens) was not like the rest, that we were violent, greedy, malicious, lustful, deceitful and that we couldn't be a part of the Confederation unless we changed our ways.
So the rest of the members of the Confederation exiled Humankind to this planet which was found as is or modified to accommodate us. This could be compared to how the British Empire exiled its prisoners to Australia. The rest of the members of the confederation agreed to not interfere with our development until we evolved to be less sinful. It was also recognized that we had to have our memories of coming from somewhere distant among the stars to be suppressed so that we would not know of our true origins.
However, we still have a sense of not being of this world and these feelings have been interpreted by our religions. Think of the Abrahamic creation story, with Adam and Eva being expelled from the garden of Eden and forced to populate the Earth. Eden would be a metaphor for the place where we were before being exiled into this Prison Planet. The Dharmic religions of the Indian subcontinent; Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Hinduism, all have the concept of our souls being reborn in an endless cycle into this material world where we experience suffering and only through attaining knowledge of the circumstances of our existence alongside proper thoughts, words and deeds can we attain liberation from the material world.
We can draw parallels between this line of thought and that of the Prison Planet hypothesis. The Dharmic idea of the material world would be the planet Earth in which we are constantly being re-born into until our spiritual progression enables us to return to the place of our origin. This sounds to me a lot like the interpretation of the Nag Hammadi library by David Icke, in which he comes to the conclusion that the material world is a sort of simulation/prison created by the Abrahamic God (in Gnosticism the creator God of the Hebrews who is referred to as 'The Demiurge' is actually the bad guy who created the world to trap us in it, and the true loving God who is referred to as 'The Silence' incarnated as Jesus Christ to help us attain gnosis or knowledge of our scenario in order to free ourselves from the physical universe) to prevent us from being in the true Spiritual world. Am I thinking too hard about this?
