What is hell actually?

Just finished listenting to an audio book "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky. The book has various themes and the main plot describes the tormented mind of an university student who killed a mean and unscrupulous pawnbroker. It is a very interesting book that involves psychology, moral arguments, human pysche, human spirit and behaviour in abject povery and also reflects the danger of being guided solely by utilitarian ethics . It describes the various level of defence the murderer put up internally to justify his crime. At one stage he compared himself with Napolean who caused mass bloodshed in his conquest for the glory of his country. He reckoned his own act of murder was more purposeful in that it got rid of an evil element in society. However deep inside him he knew he was deceiving himself and suffered severe mental agony, repeatedly obsessing and rejecting each justification.

I am currently attending Buddhist class and during the first lesson, the teacher talked about the various realms of after-life one of which is hell, with its detailed description of various levels of torture. The sceptics in class questioned the origin of such an idea as to whether that was really from the Buddha himself or created by his followers to help people refrain from doing evil. The description of hell certainly was mentioned in the Sutra but the teacher was not very clear when explaining the concept of hell. She alluded to an equivalent level of suffering as described in hell. More will be discussed in the next lesson but in my own mind the vivid and detailed description of the torture that goes on in the 8 levels of hell is symbolic to the mental agony that is a result of various levels of evil thoughts, intentions and actions. The mental anguish and torture is so well described in the book "Crime and Punishment", an example of which was illustrated by the murderer's frequent dilemma whether to end it all by jumping into the river. In fact thoughts need not be evil to evoke sufferings, unskilled thoughts like cravings and coveting alone will bring about anguish and misery.

If hell is a symbol of the mental torture of the soul, then heaven must be the state of mind when a person or his soul is at complete peace with himself. It will naturally follow then that skillful thoughts and actions will lead to such a state.

In my very layman perception, for every night that a person is able sleep soundly and peacefully, it may be an indication that he is probably on the right path.