Born in 1960 into a working-class family in South-East England, Nathan Gill’s early fascination with the mysteries of the body and the universe led him to experiment with diet and herbal treatments, and to push his body to the limit with weight-training and body-building. When a shoulder injury brought the weight-training to an end, his thoughts turned to spiritual and esoteric matters. His investigations led him to the teachings of Da Free John, whose message that we are already awake and need no liberation struck a strong chord, and eventually to Tony Parsons and the philosophy of non-duality.
One day, in September 1998, when Nathan was gardening in the drizzling rain: “I looked up, and there was a subtle sense of ‘me’ not being there. I got on my bike and cycled around the lanes and it seemed as though there was a movie going on, without any effort necessary on my part to be taking part in it.”
Whilst this event had a profound impact on him, he came to discover that such happenings where the ‘I’ suddenly disappears could actually be very confusing: “Such an event may last a few seconds or ten years or more, but unless the ‘I’ is seen for what it is – as simply a thought – then when this ‘I’ returns, there is a sense of loss, a sense of confinement in being an identified character again.”
He went on to hold meetings where, with characteristic humour and acuity, he shared his profound understanding that: “Any coming and going is merely the play of life. As far as Your nature as Being is concerned, the absence or presence of a personal self is inconsequential. Being simply is, and all of these appearances and happenings may simply be described as the cosmic entertainment.”
During his years of spiritual seeking, Nathan was divorced, married and divorced again, a single parent to his two daughters throughout most of their school years, working as a gardener in a small village in Kent. His health, however, never robust, deteriorated increasingly over time and he became weaker and weaker. Unable to work and with no prospect of a cure, rather than live in pain and dependency, in June 2014 he took the decision to end his own life.
