What was the essential philosophy of Richard Rose?

For someone who was almost unknown in his life, a lot has been written by others about Richard Rose, who died over two decades ago.

Rose himself wrote down his spiritual philosophy in two books, The Albigen Papers (1973) and Psychology of the Observer (1979) together with various published lectures and pamphlets.

But it was the writing about him by others that was more readable and interesting for outside observers. His own writing was too wordy, convoluted and almost incomprehensible, much like Gurdjieff, who needed Ouspensky to make his philosophy understandable. Rose similarly needed others to make clear what he was trying to convey.

The excellent 2002 publication of David Gold, After the Absolute was a highly readable gem, and the short 2022 book by Mike Gegenheimer and Shawn Nevins entitled Passages was an excellent primer on Rose’s “Albigen System” of spiritual training.

Gold’s book was a fascinating review of the difficulties of working with Richard Rose. Rose was a hard and intense task master, much like Gurdjieff, and perhaps this is why most potential ‘pupils’ distanced themselves from the hard core “schooling” at his farm. But for those who endured the hardship, there was a level of loyalty that resembled the psychological bond created between Stockholm Syndrome hostages and their captors.

Why was he so little known? World fame evaded him. His pupils all said he was like a true Sufi, always anonymous except to other Sufis.

What was unique about him was that at a time when the New Age hippy love scene was in full flow, he was saying:

 “It’s bloody carnage out there. Everything’s trying to eat something else, just so it can stay alive long enough to reproduce and provide more food and fertilizer for this slaughterhouse”.

He saw that the “god” of this world had created a slaughterhouse, and was not remotely a loving god.

For Rose, his desire to teach materialised after he had an “experience”. He called it ‘encountering the Absolute’.

Experiences where we leave our current ‘reality’ can occur through trauma, shock, fear, immense happiness, or simply by accident. Norio Kushi, Abraham Maslow, Colin Wilson, Ouspensky, Bucke and countless others have written about suddenly experiencing an alternative reality. There may even be a ‘download’ or ‘message’ received which the recipient feels a need to tell the world about. Such sudden revelations come as much from joy as trauma. Rose incorrectly stated that such a revelation could only be obtained through trauma.

Normally this ‘experience’ is a near-death experience, but it may be where we ‘pop out’ of our bodies as did Robert Munroe, the well-known out-of-body traveller.

For Rose, he underwent a personal shock where he encountered his female partner in a lesbian relationship she was conducting. He considered this “traumatic”. This propelled him into an indescribable experience that he called “Everythingness” or “Totality”. He obviously wanted to talk about it, but it led him to search for meaning in life and truth.

Like Gurdjieff, he became a “truth seeker”. He did this through discarding untruths, a key tenet of his teachings which he called ‘the reverse vector’. We reverse away from untruth. Secondly, he advocated remembering the past (recapitulation), and this led to observing our thought processes, what he called the ‘observer’. He also advocated that we are responsible for our own destiny, but not that of others. Everyone must find their own way. As we go up the spiritual ladder, we part company with more and more people. He finished his philosophy with “when the door opens to the Absolute, our “vector” is what takes us through”. The ego can’t go there. Robert Munroe called this our “escape velocity”.

The biggest discovery Rose made as a result of the “experience” is that the soul of man is God. We are God. When we discover ourselves, through peeling away the programming and conditioning, we realise that we are part of God. In this situation, we return to ourselves, or as the saying goes, on death we “go back to me”.  

On a personal note though, Rose had one observation on life which resonates:

To find truth and meaning in life requires much solitary time. The people who find enlightenment are people who spend years away from the herd, often in lonely places, the desert, an attic, travelling, or perhaps even in prison.

Those people are society’s “outsiders”, and all people on the spiritual path can resonate with that. Following the herd won’t get you there.

11 February 2025