What is the state akin to sleep (SATS)?
The state akin to sleep, or SATS, is Neville Goddard’s name for the drowsy stretch just before you drop off, when the body has gone quiet and you can still steer attention into a scene of the wish fulfilled. SATS itself is a fan shorthand. The letters appear in none of his 320 surviving texts.
He told people to go there for almost 30 years, and what he told them kept changing. All of it is below, passage by passage, in the order he said it.
What changed
Seven periods, 39 passages, one column at a time
We marked what each passage asks for. Read a column downward to watch an element arrive or fade. Holding attention fills the middle years, and by the late talks the body and the attention have dropped away, leaving closed eyes and falling asleep inside the scene.
| Period | Passages | Body still | Sleepy | Attention | No effort | Asleep in it | Eyes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1944 to 1945 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 1948 to 1949 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 1951 to 1953 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 1954 to 1956 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| 1959 to 1965 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 1968 to 1971 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Undated | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
“Akin to sleep” itself has a short life. We count 26 uses in nine texts, the first in Feeling Is the Secret in 1944 and the last in The Power of Awareness in 1952, and we cannot find it in any later talk or book. People who learn SATS as a fixed Neville technique are learning his wording from an eight-year window of a 33-year career.
The record
Every distinct passage, in order
Where he repeats a line almost word for word, in the next lesson or the 1949 book, we show it once. Tap a column heading to pick out the passages that mention it. The dots show what each passage asks for, and every title links to the full text.
1944 to 1945Prayer as reverie
The first book frames all of it as prayer, which he calls “an illusion of sleep.” The job is to yield. He calls effort “fatal,” asks for a passive condition, and a year later names it “controlled reverie.”
- 1944“It is in sleep and in prayer, a state akin to sleep, that man enters the subconscious to make his impressions and receive his instructions.”Feeling Is the Secret
- 1944“The mind in prayer is in a state of relaxation and receptivity akin to the feeling attained just before dropping off to sleep.”Feeling Is the Secret Body still.
- 1944“you must create a passive state, a kind of reverie or meditative reflection similar to the feeling which precedes sleep.”Feeling Is the Secret No effort.
- 1944“It is a state in which you are conscious and quite able to move or open your eyes but have no desire to do so.”Feeling Is the Secret Attention.
- 1944“relax in a comfortable chair or on a bed... close the eyes and imagine that you are sleepy. Feel - I am sleepy, so sleepy, so very sleepy.”Feeling Is the Secret Body still, Sleepy, Eyes.
- 1944“should monopolize and immobilize your attention as you relax into sleep.”Feeling Is the Secret Attention, Asleep.
- 1945“This partly subjective state can best be described as controlled reverie, wherein the mind is passive but capable of functioning with absorption.”Prayer: The Art of Believing Attention.
1948 to 1949The numbered formula
In the 1948 lessons the idea becomes step three of a method, and the phrase reaches its peak: 22 of its 26 uses fall in these two years. The new warning comes in Lesson 4, where he tells people to stop short of sleep. Out of This World then reuses the wording of Lesson 5 almost line for line.
- 1948“With your eyes closed and your physical body immobilized induce a state akin to sleep and enter into the action as though you were an actor playing the part.”Lesson 1 Body still, Eyes.
- 1948“You change your future best when you are in control of your thoughts while in a state akin to sleep, for then effort is reduced to its minimum.”Lesson 2 Attention, No effort.
- 1948“creating a state akin to sleep, as though you were sleepy, but do not push the drowsiness too far, just far enough to relax and leave you in control of the direction of your thoughts.”Lesson 4 Body still, Sleepy, Attention.
- 1948“induce a condition akin to sleep by imagining that you are sleepy. Lie on a bed, or relax in a chair.”Lesson 5 Body still, Sleepy.
- 1948“induce a state akin to sleep, a drowsy state, but one in which you are still able to control the direction of your thoughts, a state in which you are attentive without effort.”Lesson 5 Sleepy, Attention, No effort.
- 1948“a state of consciousness akin to sleep. A state which, although bordering on sleep, leaves us in conscious control of the movements of our attention.”Lesson 5 Attention.
- 1948“Relax in a comfortable arm chair, or lie flat on your back and induce a state akin to sleep.”Lessons, questions and answers Body still.
- 1949“If it is difficult to control the direction of your attention while in a state akin to sleep, you may find gazing fixedly into an object very helpful.”Out of This World Attention, Eyes.
1951 to 1953Meditation and the tide
On the radio he renames it meditation and explains it with the tide drawn at the top of this page. Keats enters here, by way of “A drowsy numbness pains my senses,” and he quotes the line again in 1952. That book files the idea under physical immobility and holds the last use of the phrase we can find.
- 1951“I find for myself the best state to be one of meditation, a relaxed state akin to sleep, but a state in which I am still consciously in control of my imagination”Radio talks Body still, Attention.
- 1951“while in this state akin to sleep, you may find gazing fixedly into an object very helpful.”Radio talks Attention, Eyes.
- 1951
- 1951“The highest tide compatible with the conscious direction of our thoughts occurs just before we fall asleep and just after we wake.”Radio talks Attention.
- 1952“It is a state akin to sleep, but one in which you are still in control of the direction of attention.”The Power of Awareness Body still, Attention.
- 1952“at the actual point of falling asleep his consciousness be filled with the assumption”The Power of Awareness Asleep.
- 1953“I keep the body immobilized but I imagine that I am actually experiencing it now.”Sound Investments Body still.
1954 to 1956Take a nap
The phrase is gone. Now he says to behave as if you were about to nap, and the stress moves to the edge itself: the scene should still be running as you go under. In Seedtime and Harvest he reads that moment into the “time, times, and an half” of Daniel 12.
- 1954“Immobilize your outer physical self. Act precisely as though you were going to take a nap”Awakened Imagination Body still, Sleepy.
- 1954
- 1954“Should your attention stray seventy times seven, bring it back seventy times seven to its predetermined course”Awakened Imagination Attention.
- 1955
- 1955
- 1956“with your physical body immobilized, you must imagine that you are actually in that "place"”Seedtime and Harvest Body still.
- 1956
1959 to 1965He sits up
Four months after his July 1959 vision, describing what he does when someone asks him for help, he reverses the 1944 advice about the bed. The 1965 exercise is stranger still: turn your attention into your own skull and wait for it to light.
- 1959“I sit quietly in a chair; I do not lie down for that position is associated with sleep.”Esau And Jacob Body still.
- 1961
- 1965“You sit quietly, close your eyes, turn your attention only into your skull”My Husband Body still, Attention, Eyes.
1968 to 1971Drift off in it
By the late talks the chair session has shrunk to a few words and the instruction is to drift off as though it were true. Drowsiness as a thing to induce has dropped out. Phrasing of this kind turns up in dozens of talks from these years, and these are the ones that say the most about the state itself.
- 1968
- 1969“close your eyes to the cell and feel you are now home, as a free man. Then fall asleep”Your Maker Asleep, Eyes.
- 1969“I have sat in a chair or rested on a bed with my eyes closed as in sleep”Enter The Dream Body still, Eyes.
- 1970“As she is falling asleep, I asked her to think of her New York apartment across the East River”The Talent Asleep.
- 1971“And with my eyes closed to this world, I simply envelop myself in my wish fulfilled”If Any Two Agree Eyes.
UndatedTwo talks with no date
Both survive without a date. The first gives his father’s advice after hearing him speak in New York for the first time, and the father disagrees with him.
- n.d.
- n.d.
In practice
How to do it
This order follows the 1948 lessons, with what he added later marked by year.
- Pick the scene before you lie back. Choose a moment that would only exist once the wish had come true. He wants it short: “condense the idea” into “a single act.”
- Get the body out of the way. Armchair or bed. “You must not be in any position where the body is distressed.”
- Feel sleepy on purpose. Shut the eyes and tell yourself you are tired. He gave the words in 1944, and his later version is to carry on as if you were about to nap.
- Stop short of dropping off. You need enough of yourself left to steer. If thoughts slide off, the 1949 trick is to look “into and beyond” a plain surface, a wall or a carpet, in place of closing them.
- Step into the scene. Feel your way in as the person it is happening to, here and now. His test in the lessons is the ring on the finger, solid enough that opening the eyes surprises you.
- Bring attention back every time it wanders. He expected it to wander. “At first your thoughts may be like rambling sheep that have no shepherd.”
- Let yourself go under (1954 on). Fall asleep with the scene still running, or open your eyes and go about your business. “The length of the sleep is not important.”
Questions
The drowsy state
Do you have to lie down for this?
No. In 1944 he says a chair or a bed will do, and the 1948 lessons say the same. In November 1959 he says he himself sits up and does not lie down, because that position is associated with sleep. The rule that stayed is comfort: he says the body must not be distressed.
How drowsy should you get?
Far enough that the body goes quiet and short of losing the steering. He says not to push the drowsiness too far, only far enough to relax and leave you in control of the direction of your thoughts.
Is it a failure if you doze off mid-scene?
He counts that as part of the method. In Awakened Imagination he says a short nap is enough and that carrying the action into sleep makes it take. In Seedtime and Harvest the half in time, times and a half is the moment you fall asleep while performing the action.
Did Neville use the word hypnagogia?
No. Hypnagogia, theta and brain waves appear nowhere in the 320 texts we hold. He says state akin to sleep, drowsy state, reverie and meditation. Sleep researchers use hypnagogia for the same drowsy stretch, and what they have measured there is on our separate science page.
What time of day did he suggest?
He names no single best hour. He says it is easiest after a good meal or on waking, and in the 1948 lessons he says that if you set an hour, such as 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you will start to feel drowsy at that hour within a week. In his later talks the time is simply as you fall asleep at night.
Sources
Texts behind this page
- Every passage above links to its transcript or scan. The 1948 lessons are on realneville.com, the books in the archive.org workbooks.
- The 1952 use sits on a page that our main scan of The Power of Awareness garbles, so we read it in the second OCR of the merged archive.
- John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale,” 1819, as quoted by Neville in the 1951 radio talks and in The Power of Awareness.
- We marked each passage for what it says, and that judgment is ours. A blank row means the passage only mentions the state. Dates come from the transcripts, and two talks carry none.
- “Lesson” means the five-part 1948 lecture series plus its question and answer session. Neville’s text is his own; we claim no rights in it.