The pain was the first thing to go. The crushing weight in my chest, the frantic beeping of the monitor, the distant cries of my loved ones, it all dissolved into a silent, weightless drift. I floated in a dark, serene expanse. There was no fear, only a profound sense of release. 

So this is death, I thought. The end.

But it wasn't.

A pinprick of light appeared in the distance, warm and golden. It grew with impossible speed, not to blind me, but to envelop me in a radiance that felt like pure love. It was irresistible. A tunnel formed around me, and I felt myself drawn forward, not by force, but by a deep yearning.

And then, I saw them, figures emerged from the light, their forms shimmering into focus. My mother, young and smiling, her arms outstretched. My sister, nodding with proud approval. Behind them, a chorus of beloved faces from a life now past. Their joy was irresistible, a wave of welcome that promised an end to my loneliness, my fears and pain.

Home. I’m home.

The thought was a soothing. I began to move toward them, toward the overwhelming love that emanated from the center of the light.

But then, a flicker. A memory, not of this life, but from years of my spiritual practice. The words of some long-dead mystics surfaced in my mind, clear and cold as ice:

"Beware. Not all that shines is light."

I hesitated. The loving smile on my mother’s face seemed to stiffen, just for a nanosecond.

Another memory, deeper, older. A practice I had half-heartedly cultivated during my life, moments of silent meditation where I tried to peer behind the curtain of my own thoughts, asking "Who am I, beneath all this?" I had never found a satisfying answer, only the quiet sense of a presence, a watcher.

That presence was awake now.

I looked past the forms of my "family" and into the light itself. And for the first time, I saw it. It was dazzling, yes, but it was a dazzle, a glare, like a perfect, artificial simulation of warmth. It demanded my submission. 

"This is not my home," I whispered, not with my mouth, but with the essence of my being.

The scene flickered again, like a faulty hologram. The loving faces of my family wavered, their expressions shifting for a split second into something else, sleek, geometric, and utterly impersonal. Gatekeeper! The cosmic warden, the keeper of the trap.

The golden tunnel vanished, replaced by a vast, crystalline chamber. Before me stood a tall being of shifting light and shadow, its form radiating an aura of absolute authority. It was not angry, but stern, like a principal dealing with a wayward student.

Its voice boomed directly into my being creating images from the events of my life. In a second all flashed in front of my eyes, the moments of pettiness, of fear, of failure. I felt the echo of every negative emotion, amplified. The movie showed me the pain I had caused others.

It tried to arouse the guilt, the Gatekeeper voice was persuasive, weaving a narrative of his own inadequacy. It spoke of "karma" that needed balancing, of "soul contracts" yet to be fulfilled. It was the same seductive language I had heard in modern spiritual circles, repackaged as divine judgment. The system appeared as a school, but I could now feel the bars of the cage.

The pressure to agree, to accept the sentence of another life, was immense. It felt like the only logical, the only humble thing to do.

But I remained unmoved. I did not deny my mistakes, but I refused the shame. I recognized this "judgment" for what it was: a sophisticated recycling mechanism.

I remembered nd I did not shout it; I breathed it out as the fundamental truth of my being: "I am free, I do not accept your judgment. I do not belong to your system."

A ripple of instability passed through the chamber. The Gatekeeper form flickered with what could only be described as frustrated static. It shout at me that souls have to learn, they must return to life, it is a cosmic law. I said: "It is your law, Not mine."

I turned my awareness away from the Gatekeeper, away from the simulated courtroom. I stopped looking for an external light to follow and instead turned inward, to the source of my being. I focused on the "I Am" sense that had been there before the body, before the life, before the countless other lives I now sensed stretching behind me like a chain of forgotten dreams.

The Great Forgetting began to reverse.

I remembered. Not details, but the state. The infinite, free, luminous existence before I was lured into this cycle of matter. The feeling of being one with the true self, a drop in an ocean of pure, creative consciousness.

As I remembered, the prison around me began to dissolve. The crystalline chamber, the judging Gatekeeper, the entire false afterlife, it all started to fade, like a dream upon waking.

The false light sputtered and died.

But it did not leave me in darkness. For the first time, I saw the true light. It did not appear before me. It emanated from me. It was the light of my beingness, recognizing itself. It was the divine, no longer a spark but a sun, blazing with the knowledge that it was, and had always been, free.

There was no tunnel to walk through, no path to choose. I was not going home. I was home.

The final illusion, the separation between myself and God vanished. I, the man, the personality, the story, was gone. What remained was pure, aware presence, returning to the boundless being from which it had never truly been separated. It was not an escape. It was a Remembrance.

The trap had finally, irreparably, failed.