According to the various degrees to which beings are influenced by the different attributes or modes of influence of material nature; virtue, passion or ignorance, the results they obtain are also of a different nature. Just as by accomplishing various acts of virtue one reaches different levels of Edenic or Paradise life, by acting ungodly, one is plunged into various infernal living conditions.

Those who are influenced by ignorance engage in various culpable acts, and depending on the extent of their ignorance, they must suffer infernal living conditions of different levels.

He who acts in ignorance under the influence of madness will suffer less suffering.

Whoever indulges in guilty acts knowing the difference between virtue and impiety falls into a hell of intermediate suffering.

As for the one who acts in ignorance and impiously because of his atheistic nature, he is inflicted the worst punishments infernal. Because of ignorance, every living being is transported by various desires to thousands of different infernal planets from time immemorial.

All hellish planets are in the southern part of the material universe (the galaxy). This is so for every material universe, or galaxy of the material cosmos.

The King of the Pitas (The deceased ancestors or souls of the disappeared who inhabit the planet Pitirloka) is called Yamaraja, the very powerful son of the celestial being of the Sun. He lives in Pitrloka with his personal servants, the Yamadutas; conforming to the rules established by the Supreme Lord, he enjoins them to bring him all sinners as soon as they die. When they are in his presence, he judges them fairly according to the specific faults of which they are guilty; then he sends them to one of the many infernal planets to be punished accordingly.

The kingdom of Yamaraja has hundreds and thousands of infernal planets, and all the unholy beings join one or the other of these planets according to their degree of impiety.

Yamaraja is appointed by the Supreme Lord to ensure that human beings do not violate the rules He has established. He thus has the title of "master of the destiny of beings and master of death", "Judge of sinners".

The Lord teaches: "The nature of the action is very complex, difficult to understand; We must therefore distinguish between legitimate action, reprehensible action and inaction."