Richard Stephen Rose (1917–2005) was an American mystic, philosopher, author, and poet who spent much of his life investigating the nature of self, truth, and consciousness. Rather than adopting an existing religious or philosophical system, he developed his own approach, which he called the Albigen System — a disciplined, self-directed "retreat from untruth" in which one examines personal beliefs and habits and discards whatever is found to be false. Rose held that an Ultimate Truth exists and can be discovered through one's own sustained effort, and he spoke widely at universities and other venues through the 1970s and 1980s, publishing several books that set out his findings.
Rose was plain-spoken, self-taught, and largely uninterested in ceremony or popularity. His directness and his method of confronting students with their own self-deceptions led many to call him a Zen master, though he was openly critical of the trappings of mainstream Zen even as he held certain Zen and nondual teachers, such as Huang Po, in high regard. In 1973 Rose and a small circle of students founded the TAT Foundation to continue and share this work, and study groups inspired by his teaching took root at universities across the northeastern United States and beyond. He continued lecturing and corresponding with seekers until illness curtailed his public work in the early 1990s.