Lokas

All the fourteen realms of existence

Then even nothingness was not, nor existence,
There was no sky, nor the heavens beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping
Was there then the cosmic water, depths unfathomed?

Neither death nor immortality,
Nor was there then the torch of night and day.
The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.
There was that One then, and there was no other.

Whether His will forged it, or perhaps He was mute;
Perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not;
Only He, its overseer in highest heaven knows,
He knows, or perhaps He does not.

—  The Nāsadīya sūkta

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There are fourteen realms, or lokās—one being this mortal realm we inhabit, and seven above, and six more below. 

The seven higher lokās are the various heavens, each characteristic of increasing levels of spiritual enlightenment, while the lower lokas each represent the evils, such as greed, malice and ill-will.

Souls are born in the realms as dictated by its actions in the previous lives—acts of piety and good-will get your closer to ultimate liberation from this material life. The contrary plunges you deeper and deeper into this miserable cycle of rebirth.

Satya, Tapa, Jana, Mahar, Svarga, and Bhuvar form the urdhvalokas, or the upper planes.

Bhūloka is the lone mortal realm.

Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Talātala, Mahātala, Rasātala and Pātalā are the lower, subterranean realms.

Below all the habitable realms lies Narakā, or Hell, the domain of Yamā, the God of Death and Justice.

Far further below even Narakā, lies the very foundations of the Universe, the unfathomable Garbodhaka ocean.

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Satyalokā is the uppermost lokā in this universe, the realm of Truth. A lone, tremendous lotus grows in the centre. Within this lotus is yet another nothingness—called the antarākāsa, within which Brahma resides as the Supreme Consciousness in his eternal meditation. The stalk of this lotus is said to extend all throughout the universe to the Garbhodhaka ocean at the bottom of the Universe.

Tapolokā is the realm of penance, and belongs to spiritual beings who carry no concern about the material world, and are instead engaged in millenia of spiritual contemplation. It is also the realm of the Vaibhrájas, resplendent deities born of fire, and therefore unconsumable by it. The spirits of rishīs that have attained enlightenment from the lower realms reside here, along with other divine entities called the devatās.