The morning after my conversation with Katha, I felt a grim, cold clarity. The questions had been answered. The path was set. There was no room left for rebellion or despair, only for the grim duty of witness. When she came for me that night, I was ready.

The plunge was instant. The swirling black vortex at the edge of my consciousness opened, and the Yamduts dragged me through. The sounds of gnashing teeth and breaking bones from my bedroom were now a deafening, all-encompassing reality.

I was in a forest. But it was not like the forest of sword-leaves. The trees here were immense, their bark a sickly, pale grey. And they were covered, from root to branch, with thorns. These were not the thorns of a rose bush. They were as long as daggers and as thick as iron spikes, their points gleaming with a wicked sharpness. This was Vajrakantak Shalmali—the Hell of the Steel-Thorned Silk-Cotton Tree.

“This Naraka is for those who violate the natural order,” the now-familiar voice of the Yamdut echoed in my mind.

“For those who force themselves upon others, and for those who engage in unnatural lust with animals.”

The words were so vile, so far beyond my own experience, that for a moment I felt a detached sense of relief. This, at least, was not for me.

Then the Yamduts began to drag me toward one of the massive trees.

“But I never…” I tried to scream in my mind.

“Did you not force your will upon others?” the Yamdut answered, its thought a cold spike in my consciousness. “Did you not, in your affair with Sameer, treat him as a beast, a thing to be used for your own pleasure and promotion, with no thought for his own family, his own soul?”

They didn’t give me time to process the accusation. They grabbed my soul-body, two on my arms, two on my legs, and with a great, coordinated heave, they threw me onto the tree.

The impact was an explosion of a thousand different pains.

The thorns, hard and unyielding as steel, pierced every inch of my body. They were not sharp enough to slice cleanly. They were thick, designed to impale, to tear, to hold. I was pinned to the trunk, a butterfly on a board of agony, my spiritual form impaled in a hundred places.

Then, they began to pull me down.

The sound of my spiritual flesh ripping on the thorns was the most horrific sound I have ever experienced. It was a wet, tearing, shredding sound, and the pain was absolute. It was the feeling of being flayed, of having my skin and the essence beneath it scraped away from my core. They dragged me all the way to the bottom, leaving trails of my own soul on the cruel thorns.

And then, as my shredded form lay at the base of the tree, I healed. Instantly. Only to be grabbed and thrown back onto the trunk for the process to begin again.

With every ascent and every agonizing descent, the memories came. Not of great, monstrous sins, but of the small violations of nature and will that litter a modern life.

Tear. I see Rohan, trying to force our little dog, Rusty, to do a trick for his friends. Rusty is scared, yelping, but Rohan holds him down, forcing him, laughing as the dog whimpers. A violation of a simple creature’s trust.

Tear. I see Maya, a teenager, in her room. She is angry with me. I see her take her favorite teddy bear, a gift from her father, and with a cold fury, she rips its arm off. A small, childish act of rage against an innocent object, a violation of a symbol of love.

Tear. I see myself, Dimple, at a corporate retreat. We are doing a “team-building” exercise. I am forcing a terrified junior employee to do a trust fall, laughing at his fear, pushing him to go against his own instinct for my own amusement.

These were not the great sins of scripture, but I saw now how they were all connected. They were all small acts of forcing our will onto others, of violating the natural order of things for our own pleasure or power. It was the same seed of sin, just grown in a different soil.

I watched as other souls were dragged forward. Men and women who, in their earthly lives, had committed the most depraved acts with animals, were thrown onto the trees with a special violence. They were not just torn by the thorns. The thorns themselves seemed to come alive, burrowing into them, causing a torment so profound it was beyond my ability to even witness.

In Vajrakantak Shalmali, I learned that every violation, no matter how small, has a consequence. Every time we force our will on a creature weaker than ourselves, every time we go against the natural order of things, we are impaling our own souls on these terrible, steel-hard thorns

Index of: Journey Of Hell: The Unforgotten Promise

• A Warning to the Reader
• A Mother’s Testimony
• Chapter 1 The God of Small Betrayals
• Chapter 2 The Sins of a Mother
• Chapter 3 The Soul and The Body
• Chapter 4 the Road of a Thousand Regrets
• Chapter 5 A Desert of Burning Rage
• Chapter 6 The Prison Before Birth
• Chapter 7 A River of Self
• Chapter 8 The Twelve-Day Ghost
• Chapter 9 The Refusal
• Chapter 10 The Universal Law
• Chapter 11 The City of Hounds
• Chapter 12 A Forest of Lies
• Chapter 13 The Weight of the World
• Chapter 14 The Price of Meat
• Chapter 15 The Question of Hope
• Chapter 16 The City of Strange Torments
• Chapter 17 The Road to the Court
• Chapter 18 An Interrogation Before Judgment
• Chapter 19 The Hall of Judgment
• Chapter 20 The Book of Deeds
• Chapter 21 The Currency of Hell
• Chapter 22 Tamisra, The Hell of Darkness
• Chapter 23 The Anatomy of a Jailer
• Chapter 24 Andhatamisra, The Betrayer’s Hell
• Chapter 25 Raurava, The Hell of the Hunted
• Chapter 26 Kumbhipaka, The Cook’s Hell
• Chapter 27 The Question of a Beast
• Chapter 28 Kalasutra, The Burning Plain
• Chapter 29 Krumibhojan, The Hell of Worms
• Chapter 30 Sandash, The Hell of Pincers
• Chapter 31 Taptasurmi, The Hell of Burning Lust
• Chapter 32 The Sin of the Eye