In the fall of 1967 I received my first meditation training from the Detroit industrialist and well- known yoga instructor J. Oliver Black. I was 18 years old at the time and had just finished high school, and Mr. Black was 74. For the next two years I received extensive training from him. In June of 1969 my meditation training was exchanged for a different sort of discipline: I was drafted into the United States Marine Corps. However, that's another story. What follows now is a very brief description of this truly great man, a man who made a major contribution to the shape and direction of my life, and to the lives of countless others as well.
Part One
JOHN OLIVER BLACK was born on September 1, 1893, in a small northwestern Ohio farming town called Grover Hill. Grover Hill is about 30 miles east of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and it was in Indiana that he spent most of his youth. He later moved to Rockford Illinois, not far from the burgeoning city of Chicago, and finally, in 1920, to Detroit, Michigan, where he was to spend the better part of his life. When I met him he was retired from the automotive industry and was directing a large yoga/meditation work with headquarters in the Detroit area, a work which he began in the mid 1940s. After having practiced yoga and meditation for almost sixty years, Mr. Black died at age 96.
During his last years he maintained his mind/body disciplines
and was in full charge of all his faculties. He never suffered
from any debilitating illnesses; in fact, he was healthy and active
until just a very few days before his passing. I was visiting
Michigan on the occasion of his 96th birthday. A celebration was
held by his students and friends. That birthday party held special
significance, for he was to leave this world exactly one week
later. Mr. Black made a rousing speech that day, and afterwards
chatted informally with his many friends. I had a chance to have
a private discussion with him at that time, so I have personal
experience of his exceptional mental and physical health only
days before the end.
That end came on Saturday, September 16, just before midnight,
while he was sitting up meditating. One of his close friends who
was present was able to give me a detailed account of his final
days and minutes. She explained that he was quite lucid and cheerful
up until the end, and all through the last day he would periodically
sit up on his bed to meditate. The last time he did so, after
a few moments in the lotus posture, his body gently fell backward
with eyes upturned and locked at the point between the eyebrows,
legs still folded for meditation. His spirit was no longer there
to keep the body upright. Sometime later a doctor pronounced him
dead of heart failure. Not a bad way to close such a successful
life, successful both in the spiritual as well as the earthly
arena.
On the event of his passing, both the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press published detailed obituaries, as he was quite a well-known citizen of Motor City. Here is the opening of the September 22, 1989 article by Free Press staff writer Darryl Fears:
"J. Oliver Black was making a fortune as an automobile parts industrialist when he decided to give up financial power to search for personal strength. It happened after he met Indian yogi Paramhansa Yogananda, who is credited with bringing yoga to the Western world."
The story in the News by staff writer Doug Bradford, which was published a day earlier, begins like this:
"J. Oliver Black was a self-made man, a millionaire industrialist. Then, one day in the 1920s, he became Yogacharya Oliver, destined to found a retreat center for yoga practitioners in northern Michigan."
Both of the articles are interesting in themselves and I would
print them verbatim. However, they both contain several inaccuracies,
so let me try to give a fuller, more accurate, but still very
brief account of this exceptional man.
I mentioned the idea of accuracy. Even this short a time after
Mr. Black's passing, much of the information of his early years
is more a matter of stories and hearsay-one might even say legend-than
accurate truth. Of the several articles published about him over
the years, most of which I have access to, one finds several inconsistencies.
The actual circumstances of his first meeting with his spiritual
mentor Paramhansa Yogananda don't seem to be clearly known by
anyone, although there are several accounts floating around. During
one of my final conversations with him, I asked him if he could
give me a little clarity on some of these facts, so interesting
to biographers; however, he had no particular interest in spending
his time re-examining events that had happened so far in the past.
My best guess is that he met Yogananda in 1931 while the Master
was on one of his cross-country speaking tours.
Why it is of such great interest as to when and how he met Yogananda
requires a little background information also. While Yogananda
certainly wasn't the only person to bring yoga to America, he
did make the largest contribution to that effort of any other
person of his generation. A master of the yoga science from India
who lived in the United States from 1920 until his passing in
1952, he is best known as the author of the perennial best-selling
book Autobiography of a Yogi. Since the book's publication
in 1946 it has never gone out of print, and it is currently available
in a dozen different English-language formats as well as countless
foreign editions. The Autobiography is considered a spiritual
classic and is beloved by truth-seekers the world over. Much of
Mr. Black's fame in yoga circles came because he was considered
to be one of the most advanced of Yogananda's direct disciples
and a powerful living link to that great master's teachings.
In schools of yoga science much attention is given to the teachers
one learns from. Of course, this is not only true in yoga, but
in many other fields as well. I once conducted a radio interview
with a young symphony conductor who had been a close student of
the American maestro Leonard Bernstein. Even though this young
man was clearly quite brilliant himself in the field of music,
much of the interview was spent talking about his world-renowned
mentor. Music and spirituality have much in common in that their
highest and most sophisticated aspects can generally be best transmitted
by gifted teachers to their most receptive and talented students.
In yoga this intimate teacher/student exchange is referred to
as the guru-disciple relationship. Yogananda is internationally
accepted as one of the greatest exponents of yoga in the twentieth
century, and Mr. Black was one of his most gifted students.
There are some facts about Mr. Black's life that are more generally
agreed upon. In 1917 he was 24 and working at a carriage works
in Rockford, Illinois. At that time the enterprising young man
decided to explore broader horizons. It was in those early years
of the last century that the auto industry in Michigan was beginning
to coalesce and take on the form that we know today. Mechanically-minded
folk from all over the nation were being drawn into this booming
new industry. One could go so far as to say that what Florence,
Italy was to the development of the Italian renaissance, Detroit
was to the development of the culture of the automobile; and just
as the cultural renaissance of Italy has had, and continues to
have, enormous impact on the world at large, so too the culture
of the automobile continues to have repercussions all over the
world. The energetic and highly talented young Oliver Black felt
irresistibly drawn into that world, and so began in the industry
by doing bits and pieces of work in early auto plants like Maxwell-Chalmers,
Saxon, Studebaker, and Hupmobile. By 1920 he and his new wife
Ethel were firmly established in Detroit. And they weren't the
only ones; this was the era of Henry Ford's famous five-dollar
day, and there were literally thousands and thousands of others
being drawn into this growing city.
Detroit was, and still is, something of a mecca for the innumerable
small shops that manufacture parts for the auto industry. Like
many of these small manufacturing plants that have come and gone
over the years, the business that was to build Oliver Black's
fortune and establish his reputation as a key player in the economic
life of the Motor City was started on a very small scale: it began
in his garage. The company was named Peninsular Metal Products
and was started with an investment of $500. By the time Mr. Black
retired from the business in 1952, it was a publicly traded concern
valued at $35 million dollars a year. Even after retirement Mr.
Black stayed on with the company on the board of directors. Eventually,
however, he left that world that he knew and loved so well, and
which he helped to build, to follow a higher calling.
Most of his Detroit years were spent living with his family in
a comfortable home at 18094 Parkside on Detroit's near-northwest
side. He and Ethel had two children-a son Robert who was killed
while a pilot in WW II, and a daughter Phylis who Mr. Black also
outlived. His wife died in 1970, and the last years of his life
were spent at his retreat home up north near Gaylord, Michigan.
Over the years Mr. Black was involved in various pursuits. Along
with being one of the stalwarts of the prestigious Detroit Athletic
Club, he operated a working farm, bred show dogs and horses, and
at one time was the largest individual landowner in the state.
He was an avid inventor and held patents on several items (among
them a three-dimensional camera and a design for a vertical takeoff/landing
airplane). He was greatly influenced by his friend Frank Lloyd
Wright and designed several unique buildings which were built
on his properties. He also studied painting and drawing and created
many innovations in furniture design, one of which resulted in
a company manufacturing a unique design of his called the Clusterbed.
This company went into business during the years of his so-called
retirement.
Throughout the years he also drilled for gas and oil on his various
lands; in fact, on the occasion of his final birthday at 96 he
was still seeking investors for further planned drilling. By 1971,
however, he had sold off all of his other properties except for
a beautiful, forested 800-acre parcel located near Gaylord, Michigan
along the Pigeon River. The property was founded as a hunting-and-fishing
club in the early part of the century, but by the time I met him
in 1967, he had built a lovely summer home on the river.
For the months of July and August he would leave behind the heat
and humidity of Detroit for his sequestered, albeit posh, forest
retreat, and it was made known that during those months his many
yoga students were also welcome to join him in this idyllic setting.
I have many fond memories of summer days spent with him sitting
by the Pigeon River. The river had been dammed up to create an
incredibly beautiful and serene lake. While we sat enchanted by
that tranquil view, our souls would drink in the wisdom of the
ages being spoken by this very unique Detroiter. Small groups
of friends would gather there to bathe in his wise discourse.
Just as the lovely Pigeon flowed steadily by, so too Mr. Black
would share a steady stream of insight on Eastern and Western
thought, and especially on the ancient science of life known as
yoga. It was an unforgettable and life-changing time for me. The
Pigeon River property was eventually incorporated as a full-time
yoga retreat called Song of the Morning Ranch. It still functions
today.
Part Two
PARAMHANSA YOGANANDA once confided to a friend that of all
his many thousands of students and disciples around the world,
whether monastic or lay, he considered Oliver Black to be his
second most advanced. To those familiar with the degree of Yogananda's
mastery of the ancient and infinitely remarkable spiritual science
of yoga, this was very high praise indeed. Mr. James J. Lynn of
Kansas City, another business and family man and Yogananda's spiritual
successor, was mentioned as first in spiritual advancement.
In August, 1951, in a special ceremony of initiation, Sri Yogananda
gave Mr. Black the spiritual title of 'Yogacharya,' a Sanskrit
word which can simply be translated as 'yoga teacher,' but which
actually carries much more significance and authority. It wasn't
until the last years of Mr. Black's life that he began to encourage
his students to refer to him by this title, although some of those
who were very near him at the end used to just affectionately
call him 'Yogi.' During those years when I had the most contact
with him, everyone simply referred to him, as I have in most of
this article, simply as Mr. Black.
For many years Yogananda had been quietly encouraging Mr. Black
to withdraw from the active pursuit of business and take on full-time
the work of teaching and training yoga students and truth-seekers.
By 1951 Mr. Black had conquered the worlds that he had set forth
to conquer when he had left Rockford 35 years earlier; his material
wealth was firmly established, and now the work of helping to
reveal the light of Spirit in truth-seeking souls could begin
in earnest. Therefore in May, 1951 his guru wrote to him, saying:
"With your organizational power you can do something much greater, much more lasting, much easier, and much more secure than present-day business organizations in which one works to pay taxes, ruining his health and happiness. Detroit, being in the center of the United States, has a great opportunity to draw true seekers, both from the East and West. I would like nothing better than for you to establish a sub-headquarters there."
Over the years Yogananda had even hinted that if Mr. Black did not, on his own, step back from the accumulation of financial wealth in order to share his spiritual wealth, then some unforeseen eventuality might come along to move the process ahead. That unforeseen circumstance came in the form of a hostile stock-market takeover of Peninsular Metal Products. All of a sudden, the work that Oliver Black had built up from the smallest beginnings was no longer his. He came out of the transaction still a moderately wealthy man, and he did continue on the board of the company for some time to come, but he was being freed up to follow his guru's instructions. I recall him many years later telling that story quite often. He would always get a laugh at his own seeming misfortune and say: "Yogananda kept telling me to get out of business, but I just wouldn't listen; but that time it was all taken care of for me." He would laugh again, with that incredibly infectious joy of his, and we would all join in, very grateful that he had been freed up for our benefit.
In July, 1966, an article about Mr. Black written by Eileen Wood
Jasnowski appeared in the Detroit Free Press Magazine. It was
titled 'The Secrets of Yoga From Detroit's Mr. Black and India's
Yogananda.'
THERE IS A NEW KIND of man in the sphere of the snake charmers, the fakirs who walk over hot coals, and the mystics in loincloths. He is J. Oliver Black, the great American yogi. J. Oliver Black conducts Raja Yoga (meditation) services at the Detroit Institute of Arts every Sunday. The dapper Mr. Black seems as far removed from the sparsely clad Indian as can be imagined. He looks more like a prosperous midwestern executive, mainly because he is one.
Black made his fortune in the automobile industry in the early
'20s. The story as he tells it is vivid and vibrant, but one is
inclined to disbelief. The star of such a drama would have to
be in his mid-70s.
"Of course," he admitted, "my wife and I celebrated
our 50th wedding anniversary last April and I've never felt better
in my life. It was my guru Paramhansa Yogananda who helped me
put it altogether; he set me straight. When I first met him 35
years ago I was afraid to get half a mile away from a drug store.
I was a regular hypochondriac. Took pills for laxatives, aspirins
for headaches, and probably would have taken tranquilizers if
they'd had them. In those days the automobile business was a fast
track, and without realizing it I was digging my own grave. Many
of us hit paydirt, but they're all gone now, except for maybe
two or three."
J. Oliver Black looks like anything but 'the last leaf on the
tree.' It is difficult to believe that this man of vitality is
in his 70s. He looks, acts, stands, and walks like a man who has
just celebrated his 50th birthday.
"I was a victim of inner pressures too, like all of my colleagues.
Besides running a successful company, I studied and taught a small
philosophy class. We were trying to find an answer to man's existence.
Everybody is, after his fashion. I was close to 40 when I met
Yogananda at a private party. I instantly recognized him for the
spiritual giant he was. Like many Americans I had been searching
for the truth because I knew it was there. Yogananda taught where
to find it. You might say he handed me a blueprint, and I've been
following it ever since."
What was so important about his meeting with Yogananda?
"He changed the whole direction of my life. Haphazardly,
I had studied the yoga exercises-hatha yoga-from Rishi Grehwhal
in Santa Barbara, California. I had listened to all the wise men
from the East who came through Detroit, for whenever they lectured
I was in the audience. They said the same thing: 'Go within; learn
to meditate.' But they never told me how. I'm an American and
I was impatient for results. I wanted them right away. Yogananda
taught me that important things aren't achieved overnight. His
contribution to the West-Self-realization-means exactly what it
says. Realize yourself. YOU HAVE TO DO the work: no preacher or
priest or pundit can do it for you. Yogananda told me that you
could try to describe sugar to a man, you could show him pictures
of sugar, but he'd still never know what it was until he tasted
it. It's the same with yoga.
"A yogi wants everybody to take advantage of the same benefits
he's had. Yoga isn't a religion, you know. It's a science, and
this is the scientific age. The law of cause and effect applies
here, just as clearly as when you mix yellow and blue, you'll
get green. It's a fact. Now when you begin to stretch the nerve
endings and your muscles, and you flex the spine, ankle, knee
and hip joints, you're just naturally going to improve your health
and feel better. Immediately."
"The physical branch of yoga, hatha yoga, boils down to this:
if you practice the exercises, you'll feel better. By stretching
the nerves you lessen tension. Yoga is for everybody, not just
a few rare individuals. It helps adolescents with posture, complexion,
and growing problems; it definitely helps them overcome teen-age
inferiority complexes. Older people get all the benefits of calisthenics
without any of the drawbacks. Men and women in their 60s become
so flexible that they have better posture and health than their
children. We can all do these exercises if we're taught properly.
Yoga is non-competitive, but challenging; the individual can play
against par, you see, almost like a golf game, if you want to
look at it that way.
"If you just learn how to breathe correctly and nothing else, it's worth it. Doctors are pointing out what yogis knew 5000 years ago. Proper breathing prevents heart attacks, and can help you avoid ulcers, strokes, and other diseases. Back troubles that plague many men and women are caused mainly by their terrible postures. The spine is meant to be erect-and yoga teaches you how to work at this. Then you'll find a good percentage of your back troubles disappearing."
During the years of Mr. Black's most active teaching, he trained many hatha yoga exercise teachers. Those teachers created a program of teacher training until, by the mid-sixties, a whole school of yoga teaching was serving the public throughout Southern Michigan. Mr. Black's main focus, however, was the teaching of meditation practices and the deeper philosophies of yoga. Nevertheless, a great amount of his outreach work dealt with the more widely-known yoga exercises, which is why he addresses the subject with so much vigor in this interview, an interview which was to be printed in one of Detroit's major newspapers. In his comments here one can easily see the fiery creative enthusiasm that made him such a success in business.
"Yoga will take weight off you, redistribute it, and build
you up. It will improve your memory and sharpen your brainpower.
You'll stop having colds every winter. Your hair will grow faster
than it used to. Our teachers work on limbering your spine, ankles,
knees. Mind and body work together; through concentration you'll
learn balance control. The American businessperson has an enormous
amount of concentration and vigor. Usually it's misdirected, but
it is there."
Do you do these exercises now-well, at your age, is it necessary
for you?
"Absolutely. I stand on my head every day, and always do
a combination of at least six and seven exercises daily. I meditate
in the lotus posture, and I find the shoulder stand as invigorating
as a cocktail-without the stick.
"And we need to learn to meditate, to be alone without being
bored or afraid. The poet W.H. Auden called our age 'the age of
anxiety.' It'll remain that until we learn to find that inner
peace that we were originally steeped in. 'Study to be quiet'
says St. Paul. 'Be still and know that I am God' says the Bible.
And yogis throw you a challenge that will keep you busy the rest
of your life: 'Learn to still your restless mind.'"
All of his hatha yoga instructors had been taught the more subtle elements of yoga science and had received initiation in the highest techniques of meditation. When this article was written in 1966, his Sunday morning meditation and lecture services were regularly attended by anywhere from two to three hundred people each week, and his hatha yoga teachers were literally teaching thousands of students. Their yearly 'Festival of Yoga' celebrations, conducted in the main auditorium of the Detroit Institute of Arts, were always attended by over 3000 seekers. There was no other community in the United States at that time which had such a highly organized and successful program of yoga, meditation, and yoga teacher training in operation. This mass acceptance of yoga is the norm now in both urban and rural yoga centers, retreats, and yoga communities, but it wasn't in 1966, except in the midwestern industrial city of Detroit.
Because of the gradual decline of his work in Detroit beginning in the early 1980s, just when all the other, now well-known yoga outlets around the country were becoming fully established, Mr. Black's contribution to the history of yoga practice in the West is really remembered clearly only by a steadily dwindling number of people. It was something of an early shooting star in the establishment of American yoga schools. There has never been anything like it in Detroit since that time; nothing. Not since the heyday of Yogacharya Oliver Black's Self-realization yoga work have so many hundreds of ardent Michigan yogis regularly gathered together in one place to practice deep esoteric yoga meditation. But many, many seeds were planted, and from those seeds many new things have grown, and perhaps many more are just now ready to spring forth in a new and possibly even more glorious manifestation.
One day I brought a friend who was a devout Catholic. Although I didn't know it, she had decided in her own mind that if this was a man of God, she would feel great bliss just being in his presence. After the service ended and we all gathered around for fellowship with him, there she was. She hadn't felt the bliss; she just didn't know what to think. Suddenly, as we were standing there, she did feel it; she later described it as "a great, all encompassing feeling of bliss dawned on me." He reached out his hand to her arm and asked, "how's that?" She has never forgotten this great spiritual moment and to this day believes and knows that he was, indeed, a man of God.