What you are asking speaks to the nature of Truth. As I say in the article, whatever appears must also one day disappear. The only thing that never appears and disappears has been here forever. You can call it pure existence or God or true self. This is something we can't appreciate with our minds. So whether it is literal or metaphorical is not really the question, we are still using the standards of the mind to establish both. The fact is that the mind and personality don't exist, since they are changeable, and we drop them in between lifetimes. The only thing that really exists has existed always. It has no beginning or ending. I believe it is the deepest part of our nature. That nature is the same for all of us. It is the Oneness. Pure, Free, Forever.
The idea here is that what changes doesn’t exist