Question: The soul is like God but it is not God. The soul is eternal – it does not have birth and death. How does the soul come into being from God? What happens to the soul after ‘complete destruction’ i.e. after the death of Lord Brahma? What happens to the ‘unused’ karma?
Answer by Romapada Swami: The soul is co-eternal with God, just as a spark of a blazing fire exists with the fire, although not independent of it. At the time of total annihilation all the conditioned souls enter into the body of Maha Visnu and remain there in a dormant state for eons. ‘Unused karma’ is held in a dormant or suspended state, awaiting the next creation. Each soul gets another material body in one of the 8,400,000 species of life during the next creation, according to his residual karma. If he becomes a pure devotee, all his karma is finished and he can go back to Godhead.
