Paramahaṁsa: So that means the life span of a cloud is very minute or very short. Is that so?
Prabhupāda: Yes, there are many living entities.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Śrīla Prabhupāda, my understanding of the evolution and the transmigration is that evolution is uni-directional, only in one direction.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Whereas the transmigration can be both, in both directions. They can go up or can go down.
Prabhupāda: No. Both ways. When you say "trans," "trans" does not mean stereotyped. For lower animals, that is one side, and for human being, both sides. Because after all, the body is made according to your desire. The lower animals, they have got one kind of desire, but the human being, he has got thousands and millions of desires.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So the platform of transmigration from the human platform, so it works, either it can go down or it can go up.
Prabhupāda: No, transmigration (is) going on. They are coming automatically, animals, to the upper level of human form. But when you come to human form, if you don't cultivate Kṛṣṇa consciousness, you remain as cats and dog, then you become again cat and dog.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But the evolution stops when the spirit soul reaches the eternal abode in the spiritual...
Prabhupāda: Yes, when he is no more entangled by a material body. Hare Kṛṣṇa.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: The scientists have no information that there is evolution after human platform.
Prabhupāda: That is their rascaldom. Therefore I say they are rascals. They have no knowledge; still, they proclaim they are scientists.
Paramahaṁsa: They think that evolution is continuing. They think that the human species will...
Prabhupāda: Yes, evolution... That is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā: yānti deva-vratā devān pitṟn yānti pitṛ-vratāḥ (BG 9.25). Progress is going on. That progress, the ultimate progress is yad gatvā na nivartante tad dhāma paramaṁ mama (BG 15.6). That where you're going, you do not return, that is the supreme progress. Saṁsiddhiṁ paramāṁ gatāḥ. That is the highest perfection. You read Bhagavad-gītā. Everything is there. Mām upetya kaunteya punar janma na vidyate. Duḥkhālayam aśāśvatam, nāpnuvanti mahātmānaḥ saṁsiddhiṁ paramāṁ gatāḥ (BG 8.15). They have no idea what is the highest perfection of human life.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They are saying that the material body started from elements, the chemical elements.
Prabhupāda: That we admit also. That we also admit. But on what basis?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: And when the spirit soul, when the living entity reaches the human platform, then again goes back to the...
Prabhupāda: Do the rascals believe in the living entity?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: No, they don't say living entity. Bodies.
Prabhupāda: Then?
Paramahaṁsa: Something akin to Buddhism.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.
Paramahaṁsa: The Buddhists also say that the body is like a house. You put the house together, you put the body together with chemicals. And when the bodies die, just like you take the house apart, all the wood, and then there is no more house... no more soul, no more life.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is called nirvāṇa. And with the chemicals you can build another house. Buddhists they do not give any information of the soul. That is Buddhism.