Richard Rose

14 March 1917 - 6 July 2005

The American Buddha. The last unquestionably enlightened being of the 20th century. Mr. Rose, as he was called, was only ever interested in one thing his whole life: the Truth. He got special permission to enter a Capuchin seminary at age 12, believing the way to Truth was to become a Catholic monk. He was disillusioned with the worldliness and lack of critical thinking within the Church, so he left at age 17 to find the Truth through science. He studied chemistry and physics and worked in a laboratory and on submarines, but was again disillusioned by the whole system of science as just another ego trip. Rose then decided to embark on the path of mysticism, making his body "a laboratory, not a cesspool." He became a vegetarian, stopped drinking alcohol, coffee, and tea, and became completely celibate, later remarking "Those years of celibacy and solitude were the most joyful of my life."

At the age of 30, in a hotel room in Seattle, Richard Rose had an experience of death as had Ramana Maharshi half a century earlier, wherein the last of his ego was dropped and he experienced God Realization. For years he lived a quiet, unassuming life afterward, not speaking about his experience until 1972, when he gave his first public lecture. The next year he would publish The Albigen Papers, a book outlining the system he had used 26 years earlier to gain enlightenment. Rose would continue to give talks and teach a handful of students at his ranch in West Virginia, until the 1990s when his health began to decline from Alzheimer's.

After his death the teachings of Richard Rose have been kept alive by the TAT Foundation (Truth and Transmission), in West Virginia.

tatfoundation.org/index.htm