Segal is an extreme case because in one blinding flash she experienced a total loss of selfhood that never returned, ever. It scared her unimaginably, and she did everything she could think of (unsuccessfully) in an effort to recover a sense of normalcy. Her awareness of the vastness as the vastness became her timeless experience, and she reports that the vastness was awake 24/7 whether the body was awake or asleep. In her case, which is obviously pretty rare, the vastness totally woke up to itself through the sense organ/circuitry by which it is aware of itself, and never regained the remotest sense of individual selfhood. From her POV there was never again a person (nor had there ever been a person) to whom her name applied. What she calls "the vastness" is the only actuality, and I think all sages are in total agreement with this.
