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The missing page 25
The 1983 Army paper Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process, written by Lt. Col. Wayne M. McDonnell, reached the public through the CIA's reading room under the release stamp 2003/09/10 and document number CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5. That copy has a hole in it. Page 24 ends in the middle of a sentence with the words "serves the," and the next page opens with paragraph 37, Motivational Aspect. Page 25 is not there, and with it go the end of paragraph 34 and all of paragraphs 35 and 36.
When the report went viral during the pandemic, the gap became a story of its own. Viewers asked whether the page had been redacted, hosts described FOIA requests and petitions, and people guessed at what could be so dangerous that it had to be pulled. In 2021 the Monroe Institute, which held its own complete copy, posted the report to the Internet Archive with page 25 as a separate file. Several video hosts say that release followed questions from Vice reporters.
The page itself is calmer than its reputation. It finishes McDonnell's comparison between his model and the Christian Trinity, matching the Absolute's thought model of itself to the Holy Spirit, and argues that mystics in many religions drew the same spiral torus. Then come two short paragraphs: one on the limits of left-brain reasoning, which he thought Gateway could offset for intelligence officers, and one on self-knowledge, the old instruction to know thyself. Why the CIA copy lacks the page has never been documented. Everything beyond that is theory.
The CIA copy of the 1983 Gateway report skips page 25. The Monroe Institute's copy has it: religion, left-brain limits and self-knowledge.
Key points
Where the gap falls
Paragraph 34, Belief System Considerations, begins on the pages the CIA did release. It quotes Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden's Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects on the world as movement, cites the Hindu image of Indra's net of pearls as a classic description of the universal hologram, and says the theory fits Judeo-Christian thought. McDonnell maps energy at rest onto the Father and the Absolute's self-consciousness onto the Son. The sentence that should complete the Trinity breaks off at the bottom of page 24. The next page in the CIA copy starts at paragraph 37.
Page 25 completes the Trinity
The missing page picks up mid-sentence. The Absolute's eternal concept of itself, McDonnell writes, serves as the model around which the evolution of time-space revolves, aiming at reflection of and union with Him. Because that thought model reflects the essence or spirit of the Absolute, he says it fits the Christian description of the Holy Spirit. Father, Son and Holy Spirit thus become energy at rest, self-consciousness, and the self-image that drives creation.
The torus in the world's religions
The rest of paragraph 34 argues that the report's torus, the universal hologram of creation and evolution, is neither new nor original. McDonnell lists the stylized labyrinth of the Hellenic world, the spiral form of the Hebrew Tree of Life and its Hindu counterpart, and the Chinese Spiral Through the Fourfold Powers, and says mystics everywhere perceived the same spiral and wrote it into their religious texts. Combined with the earlier pages, the point is that his physics model agrees with old mystical teaching rather than contradicting it.
Paragraph 35: Left Brain Limitations
McDonnell says twentieth-century physics is reaching, with linear left-brain reasoning, the same knowledge mystics reached intuitively. Gateway, as a tool for a left-brain culture, could supply the holistic contact with the universal hologram that thinkers like Einstein needed for a unified field theory. He then addresses his own readers: for people who work on strategic, tactical and managerial problems, intuitive perception and self-reflection could offset cultural and personal bias. The more fully we see ourselves within the hologram, he writes, the more we escape the prison of subjectivity.
Paragraph 36: Self Knowledge
The last paragraph on the page starts from the mystics' maxim "Know thyself": learn what is within before trying to cope with the world. McDonnell says modern personality testing revalidates that idea but can never match the self-perception reached when the mind alters its state enough to see its own hologram in context. He calls this one of Gateway's real promises, a portal that months or years of practice may open in the search for self, personal effectiveness and truth.
It is the argument his cover memo promised
McDonnell's cover memo explains why the report turns to religion at all. Having avoided occult or dogmatic frames throughout, he felt he had to show that his conclusions do no violence to the mainstream of eastern or western belief, so that readers would not reject Gateway as alien to what they hold true. Page 25 holds the core of that reassurance. Without it, the belief-system section stops halfway through its main comparison.
How the page surfaced
The Monroe Institute's Internet Archive item for the report was added on April 14, 2021, in its collection The Monroe Institute and the Army. It offers three files: a full document, page 25 on its own, and the CIA-stamped copy, which still skips the page. The item description simply notes that page 25 is included as a separate document. Video accounts place the release a few days after a 2021 Vice article raised the missing-page controversy.
The Institute's own story, secondhand
Jordan Crowder, who stayed on the Institute's mountain campus for a program, says he was told what happened. Vice was calling and suspecting the Institute had hidden the page; with the campus empty during COVID, staff went through boxes and found it in a shed full of Bob Monroe's files behind his cabin. In that telling, the page had simply never been included. This is one participant relaying what he heard, not a statement from the Institute.
A competing account
Aaron Doughty's video tells it differently. He says the Institute told Vice it never held anything back when it supplied documents, that the CIA was the party that removed the page, and that the release was delayed by a change in management. That claim also arrives secondhand and conflicts with Crowder's version, since it implies the CIA had a complete copy. Neither account is backed by a document in the sources available here.
In their own words
Quotes are checked word for word against the recordings and documents they come from. Bracketed words correct transcription errors; “…” marks an omission.
“Paradoxically, having gone to such great lengths to avoid trying to render judgements based on an occult or dogmatic frame of reference, in the end I found it necessary to return, at least briefly, to the question of the impact of the Gateway Experience on common belief systems. I did so because, although it was essential to avoid attempting to render an assessment in the context of such systems, I felt that it was necessary, after having completed the analysis, to point out that the resulting conclusions do not do any violence to the fundamental mainstream of either eastern or western belief systems.”
“And the eternal thought or concept of self which results from this self-consciousness serves the Absolute as the model around which the evolution of [time-space] revolves to ultimately attain a reflection of and union with Him. That thought model, which perfectly reflects the essence or spirit of the Absolute, fits the Christian metaphysical description of the Holy Spirit.”
“Finally, our description of the universal hologram, the torus of creation and evolution, is neither new nor original. Its use as the figure of the universe, of creation developing in evolution, is found in various stylized representations in virtually every religious system of antiquity, whether [of] Eastern or Western derivation. Whether it's the stylized labyrinth once popular in the Hellenic world, the spiraled version of the Hebrew Tree of Life, or its Hindu counterpart, or the Chinese Spiral Through the Fourfold Powers, the ultimate meaning is the same.”
“The perception of self which can be achieved when the mind alters its state of consciousness sufficiently to perceive the very hologram of itself, which it has projected into the universe, in its proper context as part of the universal hologram in a totally holistic and intuitional way. This would seem to be one of the real promise … of the Gateway Experience from the standpoint of its ability to provide a portal through which, based on months if not years of practice, the individual may pass in his search to find self, personal effectuality, and truth in the larger sense.”
“Vice, like, was calling the Monroe Institute, like, saying, "Hey, where's this missing page?" And they were making a big deal out of it, thinking [the] Monroe Institute, like, took it out to hide this information from the world or something. And turns out it was just, like, literally just in a shack behind Bob's cabin, you know, which is where we were staying at the mountain.”
“So this is it. And it has to do with religion. So a lot of people thought it was, you know, purposely omitted because of the religious implications. But I mean, compared to everything else we've talked about, this isn't even that significant.”
“People have been pressuring the CIA for the missing page. [FOIA] requests have been made, petitions have been created, all trying to get the CIA to release page 25. The CIA insisted they don't have it, but in 2021 Vice published an article about the Gateway document and mentioned the controversy around the missing page. A few days later the Monroe Institute released the complete report, including the mysterious page 25.”
“Paul asked, "Do you think that the page 25 released is real or fake? I'm skeptical since it was released separately." Well, Paul, it was released by the Monroe Institute, who had the entire report. So, we assume it's real.”
Important things to consider
No official explanation exists
None of the available sources contains a CIA, Army or Institute statement explaining why page 25 is absent from the reading-room copy. Claims that the CIA told requesters it never had the page, or that it removed the page, come from video hosts and are not backed by a document here. The honest answer to "why was it missing?" is that nobody has shown the record.
The content gives no obvious security reason
Page 25 names no operatives, units, methods, targets or results. It contains a religious comparison, a list of spiral symbols, a paragraph on reasoning styles and a paragraph on self-knowledge. That does not prove the omission was an accident, but it makes a classic national-security redaction hard to explain. A page lost in copying or filing would produce exactly the pattern the CIA copy shows.
The religion theory is possible but unproven
The most common theory is that someone pulled the page because comparing the Absolute to the Trinity was awkward in an official document. It is the only theory that fits the content. But paragraph 34 already makes the Father and Son comparison on page 24, which was released, so the sensitive idea was never fully hidden.
Ignore "this changes everything" framing
Some videos present page 25 as the most powerful part of the report and a key to taking back personal power. Hosts who read the page aloud tend to reach the opposite verdict: interesting, but not climactic. Judge it by reading it. It extends arguments the report has already made.
Read it with paragraph 34
Page 25 opens in the middle of a sentence. Start at paragraph 34 on the preceding pages, where the Tibetan quotation, Indra's net and the Father and Son comparison set up what page 25 completes. Read in isolation, the Holy Spirit passage makes little sense.
Same report, same limits
Page 25 is McDonnell's opinion in the same voice as the rest of the paper. Matching a physics model to the Trinity or to spiral symbols shows how he wanted readers to see Gateway; it is not evidence that the model is true. The site's page on the report covers the paper's sources and limits in more detail.
Use the page image
The text layer of the Archive's full-document file is badly garbled, with letters spaced apart and words misread, and video readings add slips such as "space-time" for the report's "time-space." The separate page 25 file is a clean scan. Quote from the image, not from a transcript.
Other files have a page 25 too
Searching archives for "page 25" turns up unrelated pages in other declassified Army files, such as the CENTER LANE information papers and the DIA protocols. The missing-page story concerns only McDonnell's 1983 assessment.
Common questions
What is on the missing page 25 of the Gateway report?
Three things. First, the end of paragraph 34, Belief System Considerations: McDonnell finishes his comparison with the Christian Trinity, saying the Absolute's thought model of itself fits the description of the Holy Spirit, and argues that the report's spiral torus appears in religious symbols from the Hellenic labyrinth to the Hebrew Tree of Life and the Chinese Spiral Through the Fourfold Powers. Second, paragraph 35, Left Brain Limitations, which says Gateway could give analytical, left-brain professionals intuitive access that frees them from the prison of subjectivity. Third, paragraph 36, Self Knowledge, which calls Gateway a possible portal, after months or years of practice, to knowing oneself. It contains no operational secrets.
Why was page 25 missing from the CIA document?
Nobody has documented why. The CIA's reading-room copy, stamped Approved For Release 2003/09/10, runs from page 24, which ends mid-sentence, straight to the page that opens with paragraph 37. Theories include deliberate removal because of the religious content, removal by the CIA of something sensitive, and a simple copying or filing loss. One program participant says he was told the page was found among Bob Monroe's old files and had just never been included; another video says the Institute blamed the CIA. Both are secondhand. The page's content gives no clear security reason for withholding it.
Where can I read page 25?
On the Internet Archive, in the Monroe Institute's item (TMI-ARMY Files) 1983 - Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process, part of its collection The Monroe Institute and the Army. The item, added in April 2021, includes the full document, page 25 as a separate file, and the CIA-stamped copy that skips it. Read the page image rather than the text layer, which garbles words. Start at paragraph 34 on the earlier pages, because page 25 begins in the middle of a sentence.
Is the released page 25 real?
The internal evidence says yes. The page picks up exactly where page 24 breaks off, mid-sentence, and its paragraphs 35 and 36 fill the numbering gap before paragraph 37. Its style, vocabulary and arguments match the rest of McDonnell's report, and it repeats ideas from his cover memo about showing that Gateway does not conflict with eastern or western belief. It was released by the Monroe Institute, which had its own complete copy. As one host told a skeptical viewer, it came from the organization that held the entire report. No source here disputes it.
Did the CIA censor page 25 because of religion?
There is no evidence that it did. The religion theory is popular because page 25 is the most explicitly religious page in the report, finishing a comparison between McDonnell's model and the Christian Trinity. But the released page 24 already compares the Absolute to the Father and the Son and quotes Tibetan Buddhist teaching, so the religious argument was never hidden. Hosts who have read page 25 aloud mostly conclude it is not that significant. The available record supports only this: the CIA copy lacks the page, and no one has explained why.
Does page 25 reveal secrets about Gateway, time travel or remote viewing?
No. The page contains no techniques, experiments, targets or results. The practical material in the report, such as patterning, the Focus 15 and Focus 21 descriptions and the out-of-body procedures, is on pages the CIA did release. Page 25 is philosophical: a religious comparison, an argument that Gateway could help analysts see past their own biases, and a case for self-knowledge as one of Gateway's real promises. If you want the operational side of the Army's interest, the declassified CENTER LANE and Sun Streak training papers say far more.
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