Christopher Brian Hills (April 9, 1926 – January 31, 1997) was an English-born author, described as the "Father of Spirulina"San Jose Mercury News obituary, February 2, 1997:- "Spirulina Czar" for popularizing spirulina cyanobacteria as a food supplement. He also wrote 30 books on consciousness, meditation, yoga and spiritual evolution, divining, world government, aquaculture, and personal health.
Hills was described by the press as a "Natural Foods Pioneer".Natural Foods Pioneer – Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1997 There is no robust evidence that spirulina supplements have any significant beneficial health effects, and Hill's companies were sued for making misleading claims about their effectiveness.
Early biography Born in Grimsby, England to a family of fishermen, Hills grew up sailing the North Sea. In 1940 he enrolled as a cadet in nautical school and joined the British Merchant Navy during World War II. At sea, Hills had several life and death experiences that formed his views on karma, divinity and destiny.The Movie of Life – Early Morning Meditations series, volume MM3For the Battle of the Atlantic, see Battle of Wits, p. 280, At the end of the war, as navigating officer for an Esso oil tanker docked in Curaçao, he set up shop as a commercial products dealer with branch offices in Venezuela and Aruba. When a client reneged on a deal, Hills moved to Jamaica. There with the help of the philanthropist Percy Junor"Indisputably one of Jamaica's most successful self-made men" – Sunday Gleaner, March 8, 1972 he founded commodity companies specializing in sugar, bananas, insurance, telegraph communications and agricultural spices pimento, nutmegs and ginger. Financing for the first export corporation came from British businessman Andrew Hay, then husband of best-selling motivational author Louise Hay who in the 1950s was a high-fashion model and family friend.Louise Hay Interview www.telegraph.co.uk, April 23, 2007.
On July 29, 1950, Christopher Hills married Norah Katherine Bremner (May 6, 1916 - December 14, 1995) in Saint Andrew, Surrey, Jamaica. Norah was an English woman who was deputy headmistress of Wolmer's School in Kingston. Her father, Bernard Eustace Bremner (1889–1976),"32 Years in Civil Defence" Mr. Bremner a leading figure in civil defence since 1930 awarded the British Empire Medal, Eastern Daily Press, pg 5, October 11, 1962 was the Magistrate, Chief of Customs, and Mayor"Mr. and Mrs. B.E. Bremner, Mayor and Mayoress of Lynn" Lynn News, July 27, 1954 of King's Lynn, Norfolk who in 1951 co-founded the King's Lynn Festival with concert pianistThe Times (London), Thursday, July 8, 1993; p. 4 col. D and p. 19 col. A Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy. Lady Fermoy, wife of Baron Fermoy, is Diana, Princess of Wales' maternal grandmother.Williamson, D The Ancestry of Lady Diana Spencer In: Genealogist’s Magazine, 1981; vol. 20 (no. 6) p. 192-199 and vol. 20 (no. 8) p. 281-282 The Hillses had two sons, both born in Jamaica.
Jamaica business leader From 1949 to 1967, Christopher and Norah Hills became influential in Jamaica's commerce, art, politics and culture.Music Awards, Christopher Hills Challenge Cup – The Daily Gleaner, July 4, 1955
Believing that Jamaica's strength lay in its agriculture, Hills co-founded the Jamaica Agriculture & Industrial Party (AIP)"Statistics Support Call for Third Party" – Daily Gleaner, September 13, 1949 as an alternative to the two major political parties: Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and People's National Party (PNP), both of which he felt were too busy warring with each other to look out for the middle class and the country people who were the backbone of Jamaica's rural economy. Despite competing vigorously in the polls, the Hills couple were nevertheless close friends with JLP leader Sir Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley, head of the PNP, who both served as Jamaican Prime Ministers. Norman Manley had been best man at the Hills' wedding.Given in Marriage by Mr. N. W. Manley K.C. – Daily Gleaner, July 31, 1950
In 1951 Christopher and Norah Hills founded Hills Galleries Ltd, which, in cooperation with the Prime Minister's wife Edna Manley,"She changed Jamaica for the better" – Globe and Mail, June. 16, 2009"Edna Manley: The Mother of Modern Jamaican Art" – Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Autumn 1986 – Winter 1987) pp. 36–40 became a nexus of the Jamaican art movement. The Gallery & Antiques showroomHills Galleries – Daily Gleaner March 3, 1954 at 101 Harbour Street, Kingston was built on the site of Simon Bolivar's Jamaica residence where, in 1815, the revolutionary wrote his famous letter Carta de Jamaica.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Hills Galleries supplied and exhibited local celebrity artists Ian Fleming and Noël Coward, enjoyed the patronage of British royals"Queen Mother and Lady Fermoy visit Jamaica" – Daily Gleaner, February 22, 1965"Lady Morley opens Hills Galleries exhibition" – Daily Gleaner, November 21, 1962, p 20"Of Beauty and Majesty", Princess Margaret's visit – Daily Gleaner, February 24, 1955 and such high-profile clients as Sadruddin Aga Khan, Winthrop Rockefeller,Knodler Gallery New York – "Jamaican Paintings Join Top Bracket" – Daily Gleaner, July 15, 1958 Elizabeth Taylor,"Hills Dine with Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Fisher" – Sunday Gleaner, March 31, 1960"Elizabeth Taylor buys three Gaston Tabois paintings from Hills Galleries: "Village Street", "Rock River", "Rio Cobre Dam" – Daily Gleaner, March 26, 1960, p 18 Lady Bird Johnson, Grace Kelly and Errol Flynn. Hills Galleries was also the main agent for Rowney's, Grumbacher and Winsor & Newton art supplies in the West Indies."Dealer's Art" – Daily Gleaner, February 22, 1960 Through multiple exhibitions, the Hillses nurtured or launched the careers of a plethora of Jamaican artists, such as Gaston Tabois, Kenneth Abendana Spencer, Carl Abrahams, Barrington Watson,Tamara Scott-Williams, "Barrington Watson: A life in paint" , Jamaica Observer, 16 October 2011. Albert Huie,"Huie More Than a Superb Craftsman" – Sunday Gleaner Magazine, October 28, 1973 Gloria Escoffery, and the revivalist preacher/painter/sculptor Mallica Reynolds.Hills Galleries "This Is Jamaica" exhibit – Daily Gleaner, July 31, 1962
Christopher Hills opened a Hills Galleries branch on Jamaica's north coast at Montego Bay, mooring his yacht, the Robanne"Artists sail to Round Hill exhibit aboard Christopher Hills' yacht the 40-ton Robanne" – Daily Gleaner, April 17, 1956, p 12 at Round Hill, a popular resort for foreign leaders and industrialists vacationing in the Caribbean. It was there he met then Vice President Lyndon Johnson and CBS president William S. Paley, who in 1956, sponsored a Hills Galleries exhibition of Jamaican art at Barbizon PlazaNew York Socialites Appreciate Jamaica's "Intuitive Art" – Sunday Gleaner, March 3, 1956Art & Artists – New York Times, March 2, 1956 in New York City, which awoke U.S. art collectors to Jamaica's dynamic sphere of artistic talent. The exhibition was described by the Daily Gleaner as "Epochal in the establishment of a market for West Indian art."A World of Glory to Record. Review by George Campbell – Daily Gleaner, March 26, 1956 The Hills family spent weekends and holidays at Port Antonio visiting friends and clients including their neighbor, novelist Robin Moore at Blue Lagoon."Robin Moore's Big Marlin Bet" Telepathy experiment, Supersenonics – The Science of Radiational Paraphysics, 0-916438-18-X (1975) p 593 There Hills met Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza who asked Hills to curate part of his art collection. For five years many classic works of the baron's international art acquisitions decorated the walls of the Hills' home. Von Thyssen also granted Hills' children access to his private island at San San near Port Antonio.
Rastafari movement
Hills also became an advocate for Jamaica's Rastafari movement, who were being oppressed in the late fifties."Rasta Spirit Knows no Boundaries" – Daily Gleaner, June 22, 1960 He gave Rastafarians jobs as woodcarvers, free paints to poor artists, such as the now-famed Ras Dizzy and bailed them out of Spanish Town Prison while encouraging rasta brethren to sustain themselves through art and music. Christopher and Norah Hills were personally thanked for their years of support for struggling rastas by Mortimo Planno, the Rasta teacher of Bob Marley and one of the few Rastafarian elders to have met with Emperor Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Hills also reasoned Gandhian nonviolence with Leonard Howell,Bob Marley named his record label Tuff Gong after Leonard "The Gong" Howell activist who founded Pinnacle, a Rastafarian community farm at Sligoville, a few miles from Hills' home. In 1958 Pinnacle was raided in a brutal crackdown by the authorities, ostensibly for growing marijuana, but in fact Rastafari at that time was regarded by The Crown as a threat to social harmony. Hills interceded with the Prime Minister but, with an election coming, law and order politics prevailed and many sustainable farming families had to leave the land. For his support, Hills was given the moniker "The First White Rasta". Unlike his skeptical friends and business colleagues, he saw Rastafarian spirituality as a righteous way of life, indeed growing out his hair and beard in solidarity and also in keeping with his emerging interest in the sadhus and enlightened sages of India who had much in common with the vegetarian mystical Rastafarians."Back to Africa" movement, Christopher Hills' speech at Addis Ababa – Kingston Gleaner July 22, 1960.
Spiritual awakening By 1960 Christopher Hills had accumulated a large metaphysical library on frequent trips to Samuel Weiser Books in New York, while writing his own books, Kingdom of Desire, Power of the Doctrine and The Power of Increased Perception. At 30 he retired from business"The Business of Art" – Business Sketch Magazine, July 1961 and began to research multiple spiritual paths and the physics of what Albert Einstein called Unified field theory. Prolific research papers and lectures came out of Hills' laboratory in the Blue Mountains (Jamaica) on subjects such as bioenergetics, hypnosis, tele-thought, biophysics, effects of solar radiation on living organisms, resonant systems of ionosphere, and capacitor effects of human body on static electricity and electron discharge of the nervous system. In 1960 he began a 30-year project to document the effects of sound and color on human consciousness and states of health.Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body (2nd ed.), , pp. 108, 190, 431
Global outreach
With Norah Hills running the galleries, Hills set forth on a two-year journey travelling in Asia, Europe, Pakistan and India, meeting with members of the UN and calling on politicians, scientists and religious leaders. UNESCO hired him to shoot 1,000 photographs of their projects in faraway countries, which appeared in an exhibit at United Nations headquarters.
Hills' global odyssey's itinerary grew out of publishing his views on conflict resolution and alternative government in a manifesto, Framework for Unity, that was circulated to The Commission for Research in the Creative Faculties of Man, a network he had founded of thinkers around the world which, in 1961, included Humphry Osmond, Andrija Puharich, David Ben-Gurion, and Lady Isobel Cripps, among its 500 members.
After teaming up with his good friend and noted lawyer Luis Kutner (co-founder of Amnesty International), Hills decided to search the world for a spot to establish a Center where a dedicated community could live and test his World Constitution for Self-Government by Nature's Laws, which he published in a book with an introduction by Bertrand Russell.Christ Yoga of Peace – Centre Publications, 1966
Friendship with Jawaharlal Nehru