Yogacharya John Oliver Black

Direct Disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda

A Short Biography

by Lorne C. Dekun

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 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 and was able to attend a party 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. The most glaring being that he did not receive the title “Yogacharya” in the1920s, but in August of 1951. Sri Yogananda gave it to him in a special ceremony of initiation. Yogacharya is an ancient spiritual title in the Indian sacred language Sanskrit. It can simply be translated as “yoga teacher,” but it actually carries much more significance and authority. It wasn't until near the end 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 near him at that time would affectionately call him simply 'Yogi.' Some years earlier, when I had the most direct contact with him, everyone referred to him as Mr. Black. Therefore I will continue to do so throughout this brief account.

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. 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. Even the date of his first meeting with Yogananda is not certain; my best guess is it was around 1932. (Watch video of Mr. Black telling of that meeting.)

To fully understand Mr. Black, a little background information on Paramhansa Yogananda himself would be useful. 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. He began his career 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 Phyllis who Mr. Black also outlived. His wife Ethel 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. Among his many yoga students it was made known that we were 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, 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.

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 Illinois 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 on May 11, 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 . . . Please make ministers like yourself. They will come: and we will help build a new world, even though it’s growth may be slow." more of that letter . . .

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 got the message that he was being freed up to follow his guru's instructions. I recall him many years later, quite often, telling that story. 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-1960s, 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 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.

In the early 1980s Mr. Black moved up to his remote northern Michigan retreat permanently and continued to work with students there. This move caused a gradual decline of his enormous work in Detroit Area. This was a time when all the other, now well-known yoga outlets around the country were becoming fully established. Therefore 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.

Excerpt from Betty Howard's

Biography of Yogacharya J. Oliver Black

 

FROM CHAPTER 1.

 

I WAS MAGNETIZED by his luminous face, his infectious laughter, his divine love and friendship. Shortly after I met him, as he came down the aisle, I saw him suddenly turn into dazzling light; at the same time, a strange force almost caused me to fall at his feet. Before it could actually happen, I saw him return to his normal appearance. But when I awakened from my shock -- this being the first of many spiritual experiences which I was to undergo -- I realized I was being given a message that this was a pure soul in the eyes of God and that I lacked humility and respect.

 

Later, he made known to me that he knew me better than I knew myself -- my weaknesses and my strengths, the skeletons in my closet. Everything about me was known to him; there were no secrets. I felt very disconcerted. There was nowhere to hide, and I soon found out there was no fooling him, he knew my every thought.

 

One day, as we were all seated around him, and he was at the end of the table, I began to mull over these thoughts in my head: who was he? I felt he seemed to be omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. I saw him answering people's questions with great wisdom. Miraculous things would happen around him. I realized I could feel his presence in Chicago, where I lived, even though he was in Detroit. So I was thinking to myself, he must be God, for he seems to have the power of God. Just at this point, my reverie was abruptly broken by his voice. I looked up. His piercing eyes were focused on me as he stopped right in the middle of his conversation with the people next to him and said, "Well, I'll tell you one thing. God isn't a man." He made it a natural part of his conversation, as he taught everyone around him.

 

Just to be around him was to experience spiritual inspiration and illumination. He radiated peace, divine love and spiritual strength.

 

One day I brought my mother to meet him. On the way there, she kept referring to Bible passages and asked me "what's the matter with Christ?" She thought there was something wrong with me for idolizing Yogacharya the way I did. When he stepped up to the podium, he began to give equivalent passages from yoga philosophy to all the biblical quotes she had just brought up to me. At the end of the service as we gathered around him, my mother wanted to stay back, for she sensed that he knew her thoughts. But he didn't let her escape. He said, "Come on, Mother, you sit right here, as he held a chair for her right beside his." It wasn't long before she too was magnetized by his love, just like the rest of us.

 

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.