Just going to share a fascinating thing which at least to me explain that at the core, all beings are one – a conscious, eternal entity with self-awareness that experiences pain and pleasure.
If karma theory is to be believed, evolution happens at the level of individual soul (called jivatma) – gradually a soul takes birth starting from the smallest microorganism and traveling all the way through 84m type of species before becoming a human. It's not exactly linear and one can be stuck in the same type of species for more than once or jump to a human being early.
The difference between a human being and animal is the development of the intellect sheet of the consciousness; however, depending on what was your prominent animal tendency in past births, some humans act as lion, some as cow, some as folks, observable in their behavior. It's also possible to fall back to animal birth depending on your karma as a human or for other reasons.
Can we validate this theory? Yogic methods are there which requires mastering meditation (many enlightened beings have verified it such as Buddha). Scientifically I don't know. Maybe in future it'd be possible.
I believe in a version of this, what i believe to be the obvious version. And that's that reincarnation happens continually, because we don't have singular souls but rather a great many that act in concert. Through interactions with all the people we have ever had, we are influenced, and their souls (composed of all the people they have been influenced by) flows into ours... And then we, in turn, upload ourselves to others in a continual process. Who we are is distributed across many people. This leads to a karmic concern for the future (where our future souls will be in misery or bliss).
Apply falsifiability - think of how somebody might prove it wrong. If you can't even imagine any way whatsoever, no matter how unlikely, then the "theory" tells you nothing about nature and is about as useful as any fantasy or religious belief.
If karma theory is to be believed, evolution happens at the level of individual soul (called jivatma) – gradually a soul takes birth starting from the smallest microorganism and traveling all the way through 84m type of species before becoming a human. It's not exactly linear and one can be stuck in the same type of species for more than once or jump to a human being early. The difference between a human being and animal is the development of the intellect sheet of the consciousness; however, depending on what was your prominent animal tendency in past births, some humans act as lion, some as cow, some as folks, observable in their behavior. It's also possible to fall back to animal birth depending on your karma as a human or for other reasons.
Can we validate this theory? Yogic methods are there which requires mastering meditation (many enlightened beings have verified it such as Buddha). Scientifically I don't know. Maybe in future it'd be possible.