Two Levels of 'I AM': The Structure of Conscious Creation

Exploring Neville Goddard's Double Structure of Imagination

One of the more mysterious, often overlooked implications in Neville Goddard’s teaching is this: God is imagining us, and we are imagining ourselves.

This isn't a contradiction. In fact, it forms the very framework of Neville’s psychological reading of Scripture—where God is not some external being, but your own wonderful human imagination. Let’s unpack this dual structure.

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God as Imagination: The Original Dreamer

Neville repeatedly said, “God and man are one.” Not because man is equal in personality or power to some external deity, but because man’s very consciousness is divine in origin.

“Man is all imagination. Therefore, man must be where he is in imagination, for his imagination is himself.”
— Neville Goddard, Out of this World

God is not a man in the sky. God is the I AM—the root awareness behind all states, the first principle of being. In this view, God becomes man, descends into individuality, and appears fragmented through us. This is the dream of life.

We are not separate from God in essence, only in appearance. In the deep structure of being, God is dreaming us.

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The Imagination Within the Dream

But here’s the layered genius of Neville’s framework: though we are dreamed by God, we are also dreaming within that dream.

“God became man that man may become God.”
— Neville Goddard, The Law and the Promise

We are not passive. We participate. Each individual experiences life according to their inner assumptions and beliefs. Your self-concept—what you assume yourself to be—is the seed of your experience. What you are conscious of being, you become.

So, within the divine dream of God, you also imagine yourself into various states—and those states, like the “many mansions” of Scripture, determine your reality.

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The Paradox That Awakens

This duality is not contradiction but symbolic recursion:

• God, as the great I AM, imagines creation—including you.

• You, in turn, as a conscious extension of that I am, imagine your own reality from within the story.

It’s the mystery of being. You are the dreamed and the dreamer. The created and the creator. The sleeper and the one awakening.

And as Neville said, awakening is remembering. Remembering that the outer world is yourself pushed out. Remembering that every figure, every object, every event is the shadow of your current state of awareness.

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Conclusion: Living From the I AM

Neville’s message is not that God controls you from the outside, nor that you are alone in your power to create. It’s that you are God become man, dreaming your way back to full remembrance of Self.

You are imagined by the One Imagination—and you are also the one who imagines.

And so, the question is never What is real? but always:

What am I assuming to be true about myself right now?

Because whatever that is...
You are living it.