Neville Goddard · Out of This World, 1949
Drowsy Scene Session: A Neville Goddard SATS Timer
In 1949 Neville called his method a simple formula for changing the future, and it has three steps: settle on the goal, invent one small event that could only follow it, then live that event in a drowsy state. His readers shortened the phrase “state akin to sleep” to SATS. Write your scene here and this page runs the session for you in the dark, on a phone or a computer.
- You are in itWrite the event in the first person.
- It is happening nowDrop will, soon and someday.
- Inside, not watchingLose see myself and picture myself.
Session length
Low tone
Table view
Lie down or sit back first. Never run this while driving or doing anything that needs you awake.
The source
His three steps, in the order he gave them
The passage is in the first chapter of Out of This World, a slim book that treats the future as already laid out in a larger dimension. He says the formula came after years of searching and experimenting, gives it in full there, and sets it out again as a numbered list at the end of the next chapter.
Desire
“The first step in changing the future is desire.” He wants it defined, and he adds “know definitely what you want.” Vague hope gives the imagination nothing to work on.
An event
Next, “construct an event which you believe you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire.” It has to sit after the goal. A man hoping for promotion should skip the interview and go straight to the handshake, because “Being congratulated would be an event you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire.”
The drowsy state
Last, “immobilize the physical body and induce a condition akin to sleep.” You lie down or sit back and “imagine that you are sleepy,” then “mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action.” The state he describes is one where you stay “attentive without effort.”
That third step holds his sharpest warning. “You must always participate in the imaginary action,” he writes, “not merely stand back and look on.” Seeing yourself on a screen is the failure he names, so the three checks beside the form look for it in your wording. His fix is one line: “make elsewhere here, and the future now.”
For the full history of the phrase, read the state akin to sleep.
Inside the timer
What runs while your eyes are closed
| Stage | When | Screen | You |
|---|---|---|---|
| Settle | First third | Warm glow, sinking from full to half | Follow the ring. Let the body go still. |
| The line | At 35 percent | Your event and detail, shown once for about half a minute | Read it, then close your eyes and step in. |
| The scene | Up to 85 percent | Sinking toward nothing, the breath ring barely there | Stay in the action. Feel the detail. |
| Black | Last 15 percent | Fades out and stays out | Sleep, or get up when you choose. |
His and ours
Which parts are Neville and which parts we added
A timer cannot be faithful to a book that never mentions one, so it helps to mark the seam. The word breath does not occur anywhere in Out of This World. The slowing ring is our way of giving a restless mind something to follow until the drowsiness comes, and it should drop away once you are in the scene.
The line appears once for a reason he does supply. “The only thing which occupies the mind during the waking dream is the waking dream,” so the page goes quiet as soon as you have read it.
| Part of the session | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Scene that implies the wish is done | His · 1949 |
| Body still, attention on the action | His · 1949 |
| Falling asleep in the feeling | His · 1944 |
| The name SATS | His readers |
| Slowing breath ring, 8 to 15 seconds | Ours |
| Dimming screen and fade to black | Ours |
| Low tone at 108 or 216 Hz | Ours |
The tone is a plain sine wave made in your browser, one and two octaves under 432 Hz, and it stays off until you pick it. It does nothing except mask a quiet room. This page makes no health or sleep claims, and the session is a timer with a dark screen. Anyone curious about the drowsy border itself will find the lab findings on the hypnagogia page.
Questions
About the drowsy session
What does SATS stand for?
Its letters come from the phrase state akin to sleep. That phrase is Neville’s and turns up 25 times in 8 of his texts, the earliest being his 1944 book on feeling. The four-letter acronym came later from his readers and appears in none of the 320 texts we searched.
How long should a session be?
Out of This World gives no length. He does say elsewhere that it is the frequency, not the length of time, that makes the feeling natural, so a short session you repeat beats a long one you skip. Ten minutes is the default here for no better reason than that it suits most people.
What if I fall asleep during it?
Nothing goes wrong. The session ends in black with no alarm and no sound, then the screen is free to switch itself off. In Feeling Is the Secret he tells readers to feel the wish fulfilled and drop off to sleep, so dozing is part of the plan.
Why does my line show only once?
Reading is an outside job, and the work happens with your eyes shut. The line appears long enough to take in, then goes, so that the rest of the session belongs to the scene and the screen gives you nothing else to look at.
Is what I type saved or sent anywhere?
It is kept in this browser so that your scene is still here tomorrow night, and it is sent nowhere. There is no account and no server behind the session. Press Clear to wipe it.
Why did my phone screen still turn off?
The page asks the browser to keep the screen awake with the Screen Wake Lock API, and some older browsers do not offer it. Low power mode can also refuse the request. The line under the Begin button tells you which case you are in.
Sources
What this session rests on
- Neville, Out of This World, 1949. The three steps and every quote about them.
- Neville, Feeling Is the Secret, 1944. The first use of the phrase, and falling asleep in the feeling.
- Neville, The Power of Awareness, 1952. Frequency over length.
- Counts of “akin to sleep” and SATS: our own search of the corpus described on the Neville hub.
- Keeping the screen on: Screen Wake Lock API, MDN.
For teachers of his method
Embed the session timer
You can place the whole session in a page of your own. The frame below already asks for the screen wake lock and full screen.