Sam Bercholz was devoting himself to teaching Buddhism after retiring from his successful publishing company, when suddenly he was blindsided by a heart attack. As he succumbed to clinical death in the hospital, he found himself entering a classic near-death experience--but the last place he expected to end up was Buddhist hell. And not just one hell, but numerous horrific hell regions, both hot and cold, where countless beings suffer unspeakable pain due to their own mental conceptions. A sublime being appears and tells Sam- You have been brought here to witness and understand the suffering of human beings. Thus begins a nightmarish expedition that evokes both horror and awakening as Sam is guided though a gallery of hell-denizens by a feminine embodiment of wisdom, who ultimately redeems him and returns him to life. Powerful storytelling is matched by the illustrations of master painter Pema Namdol Thaye. Comic-book drawings illustrate Sam's life story and hospital ordeal, while fantastic color paintings of his hell experience bring a startling modern spirit of imagination to the sacred art of Asia. Take a trip through the realms of hell with a man whose temporary visitor's pass gave him a horrifying-and enlightening-preview of its torments. This true account of Sam Bercholz's near-death experience has more in common with Dante'sInfernothan it does with any of the popular feel-good stories of what happens when we die. In the aftermath of heart surgery, Sam, a longtime Buddhist practitioner and teacher, is surprised to find himself in the lowest realms of karmic rebirth, where he is sent to gain insight into human suffering. Under the guidance of a luminous being, Sam's encounters with a series of hell-beings trapped in repetitious rounds of misery and delusion reveal to him how an individual's own habits of fiery hatred and icy disdain, of grasping desire and nihilistic ennui, are the source of horrific agonies that pound consciousness for seemingly endless cycles of time. Comforted by the compassion of a winged goddess and sustained by the kindness of his Buddhist teachers, Sam eventually emerges from his ordeal with renewed faith that even the worst hell contains the seed of wakefulness. His story is offered, along with the modernist illustrations of a master of Tibetan sacred arts, in order to share what can be learned about awakening from our own self-created hells and helping others to find relief and liberation from theirs.