The CRV manual is a 40-page Army working paper from February 1985 titled "Coordinate Remote Viewing Stages I-VI and Beyond," written by the Fort Meade unit's project officer to describe how it trained viewers. It lays out six stages, from a reflex pen mark called an ideogram to clay models of a site, and warns constantly against "analytical overlay," the mind filling gaps with guesses. It is a training outline, not proof that the method works.
What the document is
The idea behind it
The six stages
What it does not show
Where to read it
What the documents say, and what people claim
What the document is
The CIA Reading Room lists it as "COORDINATE REMOTE VIEWING STAGES I-VI AND BEYOND, FEBRUARY 1985," 40 pages, originally Secret, released June 18, 1998, record number CIA-RDP96-00788R001000400001-7. The cover reads "Working Paper" and "Project Officer," with the name blacked out. It came from the Army's remote viewing unit at Fort Meade, then called Center Lane; see What was Project Star Gate?.
It describes itself as an overview of "the basics that have been learned in the past three years of training," so the method dates from about 1982. It credits SRI International's study of viewer errors for its model and names no author; Wikipedia credits Ingo Swann at SRI with developing the CRV protocols, but the paper does not say so. Other "CRV manuals" circulate online; this is the one in the government's files.
The table of contents runs: Introduction, Ideograms, Stage I through Stage VI, a sample session, Future Stages, Conclusions and a glossary.
The idea behind it
The paper defines CRV as "the process by which a person is capable of 'perceiving' information concerning a site remote from him in location and/or time given only the geographic coordinates of that location." Its central claim is about error, not powers. When a viewer tries to picture a site, memory and imagination rush in and "fill in the blanks" from a few fragments: an impression of an island becomes Hawaii. The unit called this Analytical Overlay, or AOL, and the method is built to catch it.
Hence the rule in every stage: write down what arrives, label guesses as AOL, and do not try to see the site. The paper is blunt that reading it is not enough: "One cannot expect to learn RV simply by reading this document. CRV must be learned by doing." It also states, as an observation from training, that remote viewing "is a learnable skill," with a typical curve of early luck, a slump, then slow improvement to a plateau.
The six stages
Stage I, major gestalt: the monitor reads coordinates and the viewer makes an immediate "squiggle" on paper, the ideogram, then writes an A line for the feeling and motion of the pen ("rising solid") and a B line for the first automatic word ("land"). Stage II, sensory contact: sounds, smells, textures, temperatures. Stage III, dimension, motion and mobility: sizes and layout, the urge to sketch, and "aesthetic impact."
Stage IV, general qualitative analytical aspects: the character of the site, such as military, religious or technical, the point where a viewer "begins to become operational." Stage V: specific details drawn out by "interrogating the signal line" without triggering AOL. Stage VI: models in clay, cardboard or paper, built "with feeling" to quiet the analytical mind.
It also defines three classes of session by feedback. Class C, used in training, has a monitor who knows the site, so it is not blind. The monitor supplies only the date, the coordinates and specific feedback; talk is saved for the end to avoid cueing the viewer.
What it does not show
The paper is a training outline: the unit's beliefs about how the process works, in its own words, plus a sample session. It has no scored results, controls or statistics, and its statement that the skill is learnable is an observation by the people teaching it. The outside test came ten years later, when the 1995 AIR review found no case where a remote viewing report had guided an operation; see Is remote viewing real?. For a training session run by this method, see the Ark of the Covenant file.
The documents say: a 1985 Army working paper describing a six-stage written procedure for trainees, built around catching the mind's habit of guessing, with a sample session and no results.
People claim: that this is a "CIA manual" that teaches anyone to remote view, or that its existence proves the method worked. It is an Army paper, it says the skill cannot be learned from reading, and the program it belonged to was closed in 1995 for lack of usable results.
Last updated November 4, 2026.
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Star Gate remote viewing, answered: What Project Star Gate was, what the 1995 review found, the Mars session, the Ark of the Covenant target, the CRV manual, Uri Geller at SRI and more, with CIA record IDs.
What was Project Star Gate?: Star Gate was the last name of a US remote viewing effort that ran from the 1970s to 1995. Dates, agencies, cost and the 1995 review, from the records.
Did the Army remote view Mars in 1984?: A nine-page 1984 transcript in the CIA's Star Gate files describes a remote viewing session with Mars, one million BC, as the target. What it says.