What is the Albigen System?

The Albigen System of Richard Rose, a spiritual system
involving a threefold path for finding Truth.

A threefold path for finding Truth...

• A way of living your life aimed at understanding that life.
• A life of brotherhood—helping and being helped by others with a common goal.
• A system not of learning but of becoming the Truth.

Based on the Experience and teachings of Richard Rose...

• A man who reached enlightenment at the age of 30, in 1947, and dedicated his life toward helping others who were seeking self-definition.
• Who learned that the direct path to Truth is through retreating from untruth.
• And who thus recommended an approach that is "subjective, subtractive, immanent and designed for immediately changing and becoming."

A system that...

• Aims at self-definition and considers all knowledge incomplete until the knower or experiencer is known or identified.
• Does not attempt to prove itself by the vanity of logic but is inductive and answers to common sense and intuition.
• Revolves around confrontation, both in friendly questioning that challenges each others' thinking to the point of retreating from error and in self-confrontational meditation.

The Albigen System is a method for stripping away the glossy veneer of life in the pursuit of the greater Reality that lies beneath its surface. It is a spiritual system of seeking for those who are sincerely interested in becoming the Truth.

Becoming aware of our essential nature is a single goal with many paths leading to it—most of them very long and slow. Some paths, such as traditional religions, appeal to emotional-devotional people, some paths appeal to intellectually curious people, while other paths synthesize and employ techniques that combine aspects of many different systems. But there is another approach, one that aims directly at that elusive state of total knowledge often described as Enlightenment. There are few schools or spiritual systems of this type in existence. The Albigen System is one of them. It will help sincere seekers discover the ways and means to shorten the time needed to find their true state of being.

An intense spiritual path such as the Albigen System will not appeal to everyone. But there is a certain percentage of people in every generation who are blessed, or cursed, with the ability to see through some of the illusions of life and who are curious about what may lie beyond the illusions. These people are inevitably drawn to books and people that purport to answer the questions that are beginning to haunt them and that can address the nameless hunger that is forming inside them. Today there are more spiritual organizations, teachers, and books than perhaps at any time in history. This is both good and bad. Good because of the wealth of information that is available. Bad because of the wealth of misinformation that comes with it.

In practice, each individual seeker has a particular path to walk, and one person's path is never the same as that of another. But there are common denominators and universal pitfalls. The Albigen System is a practical approach to self-definition and spiritual achievement that also allows for the many and varied individual paths. It is at once a complete system itself and also a tool with which we may evaluate all other spiritual systems as well as our own thinking and philosophy at each stage of the search.

It is a system that does not seek to define Truth, because Truth can not be defined for us by others. It can only be experienced directly. And until we have experienced Truth ourselves, how can we possibly know what it is or in which direction it lies? Therefore the only sensible approach is to retreat from untruth. That is, to seek out the phoniness, illusions, lies, and inconsistencies in our own lives and in everything else—including spiritual systems—and back away from them. In this way, by becoming more and more skilled at recognizing untruth and backing away from it, we will automatically be approaching Truth. That is the path.

In his book, The Albigen Papers, Rose covers key principles for a spiritual search. A key to the Albigen System is it's maximum reversal technique, in which the natural direction of life's energy and purpose is reversed away from the material and mundane pursuits of ordinary life and turned in upon itself to retraverse the projected ray of life back to the Source. A useful analogy is that of someone in a movie theater who finally thinks to turn around and look back through the lens of the movie projector rather than be totally identified with the colored shadows on the screen. In this way, one can discover the source of the projections and also the true nature of the viewer of the picture show. The Albigen System looks at the looker and examines the examining instrument—the human mind. It is a mental technique for realizing the existence of your Essence and a method for redeploying your energy so as to achieve a direct experience of that Essence.

Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going when I die? The purpose of the Albigen System is to help you gain a direct experience of the answer to these questions for yourself.

The Albigen System is a system with proven results. Several of Richard Rose's students have realized what he was pointing at with his teaching and, in turn, are working to help others in this grand adventure.

Read a sampling of Richard Rose's writings by searching the TAT Forum index.