This human form of life, it is just like via media. By evolution we have come to this human form of life from lower animals, beginning from aquatics. Jalajā nava-lakṣāṇi sthāvarā lakṣa-viṁśati (Padma Purāṇa). It is a long list. There are 900,000 forms of aquatics. If you go deep into the water, and if you have means to examine how many fishes and aquatic animals are there, you can count. But in the Vedic literature it is already counted, and the exact fixed number is given—there are 900,000 forms of aquatics. Jalajā nava-lakṣāṇi, sthāvarā lakṣa-viṁśati. Similarly, there are 2,000,000s forms of the trees and plants, like that. Sthāvarā lakṣa-viṁśati, kṛmayo rudra-saṅkhyakāḥ: and then insect life, there are 1,100,000 forms.
In this way there are lower, lower than the human being, there are 8,000,000 forms, and before coming to the human form of life we had to pass through this 8,000,000 types of forms. So therefore this human form of life is the junction. Now you can decide whether you are going back again to the lower animal forms of life or you are going to the higher forms of life. This is your decision; this is the junction. If you like, you can go again back to the cycle of eight . . . 8,000,000 forms of lower animals. Or you can develop your self-consciousness for higher species of life, which is called deva. Deva means demigod. That is described in the Bhagavad-gītā:
- yānti deva-vratā devān
- pitṟn yānti pitṛ-vratāḥ
- bhūtejyā yānti bhūtāni
- mad-yājino 'pi yānti mām
- (BG 9.25)