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No human being can live without the phantom of omnipotence. The differences come from the localization of the phantom. Where is it? In what form do we presume to be omnipotent? Infants believe their parents to be omnipotent. United with them they are omnipotent, too. When they begin to realize that they were mistaken, education offers them a substitute in the shape of father in heaven. We reach omnipotence ourselves by uniting with God the Almighty; a strong faith makes us relatively invulnerable.
A child is omnipotent even without any help from outside. His real might is deplorably small but he overcomes his limitations with his strong imagination. A child four years old takes a pencil and “draws.” A few tottering odd lines are all he produces. He cannot draw and he has clearly failed. But the child does not think so at all. Most decidedly he pronounces the line to be a man on horseback or any complicated formation he wishes it to be. What we observe in this child is the unlimited creative power of God. It is like God's voice: “Let there be light! And there was light.”
Later in life this creative imagination loses ground. Insane people with their delusions regress to it. We call them megalomaniacs. They believe themselves great men, kings and even gods. An unfortunate mother of a child that died fondled a piece of wood and declared it to be her baby returned to life. Free of the reports of their senses and of logic, sometimes free of moral inhibitions as well, the insane can believe and can accomplish anything they wish. There is really no difference between them and the divinity; the divinity cannot be more than all-mighty, either, and is all-mighty only because we believe it to be.
We remain omnipotent all our life long in our dreams. In dreams