150. Our condition when we rely on ourselves or when we think we live by our own power can be compared to slumber or unconsciousness. The people of old actually called that condition slumber, and the Word speaks of it as "being flooded with a spirit of slumber" [Isaiah 29:10] and "sleeping a sleep" [Jeremiah 51:39, 57].

The truth that human selfhood is inherently dead, that none of us have any life on our own, is demonstrated in the world of spirits by vivid experience — so vivid that evil spirits, who love nothing but selfhood or a sense of autonomy and obstinately insist that they live independently, become convinced and admit that life is not theirs after all.

I more than any other have been given the opportunity in the last several years to see what "human autonomy" amounts to, finding as I have that not a single one of my thoughts originated in me. I have been able to perceive with utmost clarity that every component idea in my thinking has come from outside, and sometimes I have seen where it came from and how it entered.

Therefore those who suppose they live by their own power have it wrong. By believing that they live independently, they adopt all possible evil and falsity as their own, and this they would never do if they believed the situation to be as it really is.