Richard Rose was one of the most profound and unusual spiritual teachers this country has ever produced. A native son from the hills of West Virginia, Mr. Rose underwent a cataclysmic spiritual experience at the age of thirty that left him with an intimate understanding of the secrets of life and death. He is often referred to as a "Zen Master" by the people who knew him because of the depth of his wisdom and the spiritual system he conveyed to his students. But he did not expound traditional Zen, or any other traditional teachings. What he taught was unique because it arose from his direct personal experience of the Truth.
Though he was the author of several books on esoteric philosophy and lectured widely in universities across the country, Richard Rose has remained largely unknown. He has been described, in fact, as "The greatest man no one's ever heard of." He appeared in newspaper articles and on local talk shows during lecture tours, and was featured in spiritual journals from time to time, but his teaching is a throw-back to that of the stern Zen masters of a thousand years ago, and his hard-edged, uncompromising approach to life and spiritual work is not a path for the masses.
From a very early age, Richard Rose was a man on a mission: to find an answer to the great riddle of life. One of his earliest memories is writing over and over in an awkward child's hand, "Many are called, but few are chosen." At the age of twelve, encouraged by his parents, he entered a Capuchin seminary in Pennsylvania to study for the priesthood. His mother was most adamant about his becoming a priest, while he wanted, simply, to find God. After five years he left, however, disenchanted with religious life and its constant admonitions to be content to believe church doctrines, not to seek a personal experience of God.
Disillusioned with religion, he focused on physics and chemistry in college. He hoped to find the keys to the universe in atoms and molecules, but eventually realized that logic and science were yet another endless tangent. He then turned to yoga and asceticism, and in his twenties he maintained an extremely disciplined lifestyle. "I decided to make my body a laboratory," he said, "not a cesspool." He became a vegetarian, did not smoke or drink, and observed strict celibacy. He also spent long months in solitude on his remote farm in the hills of West Virginia. "Solitude is beautiful," he says. "Those years of celibacy and solitude were the most joyful of my life."
But Richard also knew he needed to seek out information about the spiritual path, and find others who were on it. And so he often crisscrossed the country in search of someone who might have achieved true wisdom. This was in the '30s and '40s, however, and there were few books available, and even fewer honest teachers. He must have presented quite an appearance in those days. He kept his head shaved, wore a goatee, and in keeping with his years in the seminary, perhaps, dressed entirely in black, including a black snap-brim fedora reminiscent of the gangsters of the day.
He would travel hundreds of miles by bus or hitchhiking because he had heard a certain book may be available in a distant library. He met with spiritualists, witch-doctors, shamans, healers, psychics, yogis, and gurus, most often coming away from these meetings disappointed, but wiser for the experience. He joined every spiritual and psychic group he could find, learned what they had to offer, then ended up rejecting almost all of them.
Along the way, he began to develop his own unique way of sifting through the mountain of information and misinformation available, looking for that which was most likely to be true. His training as a scientist led him to approach the abstract realm of the spiritual scientifically, whereas the norm was usually, blind faith, wishful thinking, and confusion. This scientific approach to spiritual work was the genesis of what he would later call the Albigen system.
He wanted to unravel the Gordian Knot, and lived only for that purpose. He decided he would rather suffer insanity or death than be ignorant of his destiny, his source, his true Self. Those who knew him then found him to be a man possessed by an insatiable desire to find out what lay behind the curtain of pretense so often accepted as a "wonderful life." He doubted everything, and questioned everybody he met about their philosophy of life--and death. He sought only one thing: a final answer that would dissolve all his doubts and questions. He wanted THE answer.
Then, at the age of thirty, after a life of asceticism, searching, and eventually trauma, Richard Rose had a Spiritual Awakening of great magnitude. Years later, he discovered in the writings of Ramana Maharshi a descriptive term for what he had undergone--Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi--the Hindu term for the maximum human experience possible, in which the individual mind dies, and the individual awareness merges totally with the source of all life and awareness--the Absolute, God, Truth. Maharshi metaphorically spoke of this experience as that of a drop of water merging with the ocean.
For many years afterwards Mr. Rose struggled to understand the implications of his Enlightenment experience, and to translate it into a system that might help others achieve the same Realization. Finally, he distilled his mountain of notes into a handbook for spiritual and philosophic seekers, outlining the many pitfalls, as well as illuminating the essential elements for success on the spiritual path. It is entitled "The Albigen Papers." Later, the spiritual path that this book describes became known as The Albigen System.
Richard Rose lived, spoke, and wrote without the pretense or arrogance so often found in spiritual and philosophic work. He has never charged any money for his teaching, and has never closed his door to any sincere seeker, or to anyone who was troubled and wanted to discover an avenue to peace and mental clarity. Since his first public lecture in Pittsburgh in 1972, he maintained a lifestyle unaffected by opportunities for wealth, fortune, and fame. He was, and is, a simple, humble man, who had the determination, inspiration, and dedication it takes to discover, possibly by accident, the total answer to the riddle of life.
Richard Rose passed away on July 6, 2005, in a nursing home, on a floor that specializes in patients with Alzheimer's disease. See the Epilogue to "After the Absolute: The Inner Teachings of Richard Rose" by David Gold with Bart Marshall, for the poignant description of one long-time, former student's reaction to Mr. Rose's condition.
