Soul..??

Recently I have been reading and listening to a few philosophical thoughts and also self-styled godmen and gurus, and also a few friends and family. The general consensus is to imply that the inherent destination of soul or atma or atman is pure bliss/happiness/peace/moksha/nirvana whatever you want to call it. And we, as humans, should strive towards it. That is our basic objective in life. 

They also in one way or another state that the inherent nature of the soul is never changing throughout different births. And the karmic theory kind of revolves around this absolute truth about the soul.

This made me think, if that's the truth, then, why doesn't the atman seek the same when it's in the body of a lion or a parrot? Why is it only okay with sustainability of the physical body that it inhabits then?

A lot of philosophical thinkers, especially within the Indian tradition, say the soul and body are different entities. One of the greatest shlokas from the Bhagavad Gita also reads - “vāsāṃsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya navānī gṛhṇāti naro'parāṇi | tathā śarīrāṇi vihāya jīrṇānyanyāni saṃyāti navānī dehī”, loosely translating to - “just as we discard old or soiled clothes for new clothes, so does the soul discards old bodies for new.” Clearly marking a distinction between the body and the soul/atman.

But if the soul were to truly want moksha or whatever, why does it not make the body attain it inherently in any other form of life? Why in all other forms is it perfectly happy just engaging in daily survival and activities that help sustain its current physical form? Is it that the soul itself is lost? If yes, that means the soul is corruptible? But how can something which is supposed to be part of the Brahman or the universal singularity which is supposed to be absolute and pure, be corrupted or lost? That in itself is a contradiction. How can something absolutely pure and incorruptible be formed out of integration of impure and corruptible sub-parts? 

I think the soul, if there is something like that, wants to simply exist. Nothing more, nothing less. That is the reason that survival is the biggest motivator for any living thing that the said soul inhabits. You can say that those are bodily instincts, but then how do these instincts appear? Do bodily instincts exist separately from the consciousness or atman or soul? If, life in itself is nothing, and the soul or atman cannot die, then why does a one day old baby have any survival instinct, that too inherently? The bodily instincts come and go along with our consciousness. And without consciousness most gurus would not be able to define what soul is. So we can deduce that consciousness itself is the essence or proof of a soul or atman. And consciousness is indistinguishable from the drive to persist and survive. Where does it leave the atman or the soul as described by various philosophies then, I wonder?