Souls incarnated in animal or plant bodies also follow the path of spiritual evolution, which will allow them, when the time comes, to incarnate in a human body and thus achieve spiritual liberation.

On the spiritual level, souls incarnated in animal or plant bodies are all on the same level as those residing in human fleshly bodies. This is why God commands us to no longer slaughter land and aquatic animals, to no longer destroy plants, including trees, which serve as shelter or refuge for many living beings (insects, butterflies, caterpillars, birds, squirrels, monkeys, etc.), and to no longer eat meat, fish, and eggs.

Why does the Supreme Personality of Godhead allow the wicked to destroy the righteous?

Indeed, many people in the present age—the age of discord, quarrels, hypocrisy, indifference, decadence, sin, and forgetfulness of God—are under the influence of the material energy of the Supreme Lord, in its illusory form, which plunges them into ignorance of the facts relating to Lord Krishna as He really is and of existential truth.

Under the influence of the illusory energy known as maya, man chooses ease and sense pleasure, and sees three doors opening before him, which lead to hell: lust, anger, and greed. Whoever does not close them, does not deviate from them, distances himself from God, plunges into darkness and, through the effects it provokes, ends up suffering.

He does not see the point of controlling his senses. Uncontrolled senses, enslaved by lust, are compared to enemies, who will force him to become their slave. Whoever ignores their pernicious nature and abandons himself to them, becomes their victim, destined to suffer in this life, and certainly in the next.

In truth, it is the interest of the soul that each of us is that must be sought, and not that of the body in which we are incarnated.

But the people of the present age, unfortunately immersed in materialism, are completely ignorant of the higher spiritual data, which dispense sublime and eternal knowledge, leading to God, the true world, and true life. They do not know that they are blind, as Jesus said. They do not know that they are acting under the influence of Maya, the illusory energy. If they do not resist it, they will be overcome by it, and forced to die and be reborn endlessly.

The true function of human beings is not to seek indiscriminate, continuous, unrestrained enjoyment of their senses, like an animal, but rather to practice austerity, penance, repentance, and the regulative principles (not having sex outside of marriage, not eating meat, fish, or eggs, not consuming drugs, cigarettes, coffee, or tea, and not gambling) in order to acquire true happiness and eternal spiritual bliss, which transcends fleeting material happiness.