"State" Design Pattern Issues

Question

I am implementing a class that requires state information. I decided to follow the design pattern, and I found a great site for reference (which provided the code below) but I need to implement substates. It would be impractical to store all of the states in the fashion below. I am trying to find a way to somehow store another substate in the class below without creating so many classes. I am thinking about creating the substates the classic way with just constants, but I cant store the current substate in the static final States. In short, either using the code below or not, how do I implement a system with states and substates following the State Design Pattern?
abstract class State {
    static State initialState;
    static final State state1 = new State1();
    static final State state2 = new State2();
    protected State() {
      if (initialState == null) initialState = this;
    abstract void stateExit(StateOwner owner);
    abstract void stateEnter(StateOwner owner);
  class State1 extends State {
    void stateExit(StateOwner owner) {
    void stateEnter(StateOwner owner) {
  class State2 extends State {
    void stateExit(StateOwner owner) {
    void stateEnter(StateOwner owner) {
  }

Answer 1

This isn't exactly an implementation of the state pattern.
I suggest that you check out the GOF book for details but here are some suggestions:
1) Your abstract State should not contain State objects but should provide the interface for your State behavior.
2) Each substate that you describe is actually an individual State and should be a concrete implementation of the State class or interface.
3) There are several ways to handle state transitions but one that I like is to have the concrete States know about when to make state transitions and provide a call back mechanism to the context that has the handle to the state to allow the state to set the new state in the context when a state transition occurs.
For example
abstract class State
    abstract void stateExit(StateOwner owner);
    abstract void stateEnter(StateOwner owner);
class State1 extends State {   
    void stateExit(StateOwner owner) {
        owner.setState(new State2().stateEnter(owner));
    void stateEnter(StateOwner owner) {
class State2 extends State {
   void stateExit(StateOwner owner) {
    void stateEnter(StateOwner owner) {
public class StateOwner
    State s;
    public StateOwner()
        s = new State1(this);
        s.stateEnter(this);
    public void setState(State s)
        this.s = s;
}This is how I've implemented it and in general how it is done in GOF.
Hope this helps.
Charles