Question: Why 8,400,000 Species? | ||||
Why God has created 8,400,000 different species? | ||||
Answer: 8,400,000 Different Ways to Enjoy | ||||
God has created the 8,400,000 different species to facilitate the conditioned soul's desire to enjoy this material world. The illusioned living being tries in one way to enjoy and is not satisfied. Then he tries to enjoy in another way and is still not satisfied. Because he so much desires to enjoy this material world, Krishna kindly facilitates him by giving him 8,400,000 different ways to try to enjoy this material world. But when he comes to his senses, he realizes that this material world is simply a place of misery, no matter what position he may take here, he inquires why he is suffering and desires to realize the Absolute Truth. |
Comments
This is the real evolution. The different species are fixed, but the soul can transmigrate up and down, until finally we get the seed of devotional service and begin on our path of back to home, back to Godhead.
It is only from the human form that we can transcend the repeated cycle of birth, old age, disease and death once and for all. That is why the human form is so important.
The species we adopt depends on how envious we are. We can go all the way down to a one celled indra gopa germ if we are really envious. Then we have to work our way back up to the human form one species at a time. Then if we don't use the human form for self realization, and we simply elaborate on eating, sleeping, mating and defending, we can lose the human form again and again. This is the greatest danger, to lose the human form. To associate with devotees and to get a taste of Krishna prasad guarantees us at least a human body in our next life.
Prabhupada said one time that if we were to try to count all the species, we wouldn't be able, so the scripture tells us how many to settle all questions.