Bagheera wrote:That's not extraordinary in the least. Yui specifically says that all beings have the power to return to human form. There's nothing ambiguous about this statement: all beings have the power, period. All the have to do is be able to "imagine themselves in their own heart," whatever the hell that means.
Yes, but can =/= will. Perhaps they aren't in a state to know this is a possibility. Or worse, perhaps they do know and simply choose not to. Either way Shinji pretty clearly is and has been alone in the ruins of the world for some time.
No. She said that when AT Fields returned people would feel pain. There was no qualifier there -- if she ended Instrumentality, people would feel pain again.
Any people who existed as people, sure. Or they could drift into nonbeing and escape this situation, disolving into Nirvana.
Because Yui said so.
Yes, but Yui is batshit crazy, seeing humanity from the perspective of a timeless outsider more concerned with humans as a species than as individuals. She's saying this right as she's in the process of bugging out for good so excuse me if I don't just take her word for it.
The natural reading
There is no such thing. You're just privileging your own view as somehow intrinsically correct rather than just one of many options a viewer could potentially come to.