You can keep saying "touching it makes you stop existing" but it won't magically insert that phrase into the source material. Nothing says that. All we know is that you get pulled into it and the idea is that you become a god and can't come back, except for one person who did come back. You say this person didn't actually make it there, but that contradicts the text again.
So, to summarize the situation as I reckon it:
"
Coming in contact with it means instant death. The soul of a mere human simply 'returns to the source', so to speak. In other words, it gets sucked into the Root."
"
"But you said there were no survivors..."
"Yeah, because everyone who's gone in turns into God, too."
"
To see, touch and understand it makes even the impossible possible. It has gone by many names over the years, but you can say it's where God lives."
So, contact with the Root is explicitly "a return to the source."
Now, "Return" is the keyword here. Obviously, you can't "return" to a place you were never in. So, for contact with the Root to be described as a "return," the contactee must have been, in some sense, present
in it before. You seem to be interpreting the contact in question as the Root being just an actual void-place where, after connection is made, you just stay there, literally floating, as some divine being. This scenario is pretty strange; was
everyone just floating inside the Root as "a god" at some point? Were they teleported out, at some other point?
This is obviously a pretty scuffed reading of the text when you look at this:
"
—The swirl of the Root is a "place" where all causalities interlace, where all things are in potential, and therefore where nothing is whatsoever. That is my true shape. Though I am merely bound to it, I am nonetheless a part of it. And the part and the whole of a nothingness are the same, wouldn't you say?."
So, the Root is "where all things are in potential" and "where all causalities interface." I.e. It's the potentiality of all things before they exist. Everything pre-exists there "prior" to the world being actually generated. More: As the above quote says, in the Root, part and whole are the same, which indicates it is indivisible as well.
Here, this is also described in similar terms. In terms of "flowing out" of the Root, and of (being incapable of) "returning" to it. The return is mentioned directly after this outflow and contrasts it in the text, so, obviously, the return is just the return to the state prior to the outflow.
The above dialogue also describes the event of contacting the Root as "instant death." The exact kanji used being "消滅,"
which does indeed mean something in that general context. It means termination, annihilation, extinction, etc etc.
So, given that, "return to the Root" very obviously just means returning to being a potentiality existing in the Root, which is the fount of everything and where all things are before they exist. But as already noted: In the Root,
part and whole are the same, and so things don't pre-exist in the Root as actual subsisting "gods" that live there. They pre-exist in the Root
as the Root itself.
So, yeah, context alone affirms what Paul and others have said here, from what I can gather. Everything else seems to be just inability to interpret a text and go beyond the plain meaning of phrases (And sometimes even of grasping the plain meaning, too), sorry.
Since "Contact with the Root = Reunification with the Root" is just indubitably correct, then likewise, the reading of the text has to be shaped by that, since it is what the work establishes. Your current argument seems to hinge entirely on the idea of the Root as this actual void-place where you can just float around, but the text seems to extensively contradict that.
Even Shiki being "in the Root" is something that's not problematic whatsoever, even. Firstly, because taking the text entirely plainly just results in the Root being
spatial, which even you deny. So you are already a few steps removed from the plain meaning of the words used even in your interpretation (Nevermind the fact that
the text itself says the terms applied are "meaningless" and whatnot). Secondly:
1) To "make contact" with the Root is to reunify with the Root.
2) When she was "in the Root," Shiki evidently did not reunify with it.
∴ Shiki did not make contact with the Root. At least, not in the sense in which your argument requires to work.
The argument also presupposes that "to be in the Root" as Shiki was is the same as "To make contact with it," which doesn't appear to be a given. But I'll let the actual supporters cash that out.
And even under another angle your argument seems bizarre, too, seeing as the text plainly depicts Shiki's experience as a kind struggle between life and death:
And yet, it was all so calm and serene. It feels as if, in this place without meaning, the fact that I existed at all fits me. Here lay entropy, the end of all things, a place the living may never observe, but only the dead may enter. I died. And yet I am still alive. I felt my mind about to lose its grip. Two years. An instant, stretched out to an eternity. Both are accurate measures of my time spent in this “ ”. Here, I touched death. Here, I fought for my life. Here, I awakened."
"Here, I touched death." Here, I fought for my life." "I felt my mind about to lose its grip." "I died. And yet I am still alive." Which fits with how, as said prior, true contact with the Root means annihilation.
Even when Araya was preparing to make contact with the Root, both him and Touko postulated that he may or may not retain his sense of self.
The quotes you've given have the characters say "
Even if you touch the Root, some shade of yourself will almost certainly remain on this side.." "Remain on this side." That seems to be what retaining a sense of self refers to.