In Jain philosophy this point is subtle, and different acharyas explain some details differently, but the main ideas are:

1. Nigod is the “starting point,” not a regular place to go back to again and again once you have evolved.

- Nigod jivas are in the lowest, almost dormant state, with only touch-sense and extremely heavy karma. - From there, a very small number of souls gradually come out and begin the journey through ordinary life-forms (one‑sensed, then two‑ to five‑sensed, human, deva, narak, etc.).

1. After coming out of Nigod, a soul can wander in saṃsār for a very, very long time – but there is no fixed number of lives or years.

- The type and length of each birth (ayushya‑karma) is completely decided by that soul’s karma, so it is not the same for everyone. - Some may quickly get higher births and right faith; others may keep revolving in lower forms for extremely long, but still finite, periods at each stage. - Jain texts do not give a “fixed formula” like: “after X lives or Y years, the soul must do such‑and‑such.” It is always karma‑dependent.

1. Does the soul ever go back to Nigod after coming out?

Here there are two concepts you may have heard:

- Nitya‑nigod – souls that have always remained in nigod and never yet come out. - Itara‑nigod – sometimes described (in some explanations) as souls that “return” to a nigod‑like state after other lives.

But practically, for us as jivas who have already come out and reached human birth:

- Traditional teaching (used in vyavahār / practical explanation) is: once a soul has started evolving out of Nigod, the journey is “forward” toward higher and higher development; it does not normally “drop back” into original nigod again like a routine punishment for bad karma. - Heavy bad karma can definitely push the soul to very low births (hells, lower tiryanch, very low one‑sensed forms), but this is still within the ordinary saṃsāric cycle, not usually described as “back to Nigod” in simple Jain teaching for sadhaks.

So for spiritual understanding: - Think of Nigod as the almost‑beginningless “sleep state” of jivas. - Once awake and out, the soul keeps revolving in the four gatis according to karma until it either attains moksha or continues saṃsār. - The emphasis is not on “you will be sent back to nigod,” but on “you may fall to very low states again if you accumulate bad karma.”

1. Is the “ordinary form” (non‑nigod) forever?

- The soul itself is eternal (anādi‑anant). - Its wandering in ordinary forms (non‑nigod bodies) can, in principle, continue endlessly if it never attains right faith and the path to moksha. - There is no fixed maximum number of births after which it must either get moksha or go back to Nigod. - Moksha is possible for every bhavya jiva, but only when it creates the right causes (samyak‑darshan, jnān, chāritra).

So, in simple words:

• There is no fixed count of lives or years once a soul has left nigod.
• Scriptures do not give a strict rule that “after some fixed time it goes back to nigod.”
• For our purpose as practising Jains, we treat this human birth as a very rare chance after an unimaginably long stay in nigod and lower forms, and we focus on using it for dharma so that the journey moves toward moksha, not down again to the lowest births.

You can read more basic explanations of Nigod here