His Glory Triumphantly Dominates the World

In this material world people are regularly glorified in the news media and in so many other ways. But what is their actual glory? Everyone is simply acting selfishly and ingloriously for their own sense gratification. Some are acting in goodness, some in passion, and some in ignorance according to the dictates of karma. Therefore the pure selfless glory of Lord Sri Krishna stands unequalled and supreme far, far beyond the glory of anyone else. This is confirmed as follows in Brahma-samhita Text 5.42

ānanda-cinmaya-rasātmatayā manaḥsu
yaḥ prāṇināṁ pratiphalan smaratām upetya
līlāyitena bhuvanāni jayaty ajasraṁ
govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi

"I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, whose glory ever triumphantly dominates the mundane world by the activity of His own pastimes, being reflected in the mind of recollecting souls as the transcendental entity of ever-blissful cognitive rasa."

Transcendental Entity of Ever-Blissful Cognitive Rasa

Answers by Citing the Vedic Version

Question: How Do Animals Qualify for Human Birth?

If due to misdeeds in my current life, I take birth as an insect or an animal in the next birth, what would I be expected to do while I am in the non-human body to qualify myself to be born as a human again? Being an animal I would not know about Krishna.

I have a second question. Does the soul have a gender or could the gender keep changing over lifetimes?

Thanking you,

Satya

Answer: They Automatically Evolve to Human Form

Those souls who have taken birth as insects or animals are suffering the reactions and are burning off the karma from sins they committed when they were in the human form. They are completely under the grip of the material nature and are forced to simply act as insects or animals with no free will. Gradually over the course of time by their suffering through many births and deaths in species after species they will become sufficiently purified to automatically regain the human form. They have no power to consciously act to purify their existence. They simply must endure their karma birth after birth until they evolve to the human form in which they will have the free will to surrender to Krishna and escape the cycle of birth and death.

The soul is neither male nor female, but assumes male and female bodies in the cycle of birth and death according to the law of karma. For example, a man who dies thinking of a woman will become a woman in his next life. And a woman who dies thinking of a man will become a man in her next life.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari