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"SECRETS OF YOGA FROM DETROIT'S MR. BLACK AND INDIA'S YOGANANDA" ~~ reprinted in Self-Realization magazine,1967

💜🙏 YOGACHARYA OLIVER BLACK conducted his last Kriya Initiation as a Minister of Self-Realization Fellowship in June of 1989 at Song of the Morning Ranch.  He consciously left his body at the age of 96 on September 16 of the same year.
~~~

There is a new kind of man in the sphere of the...mystics in loincloths. He is J. Oliver Black, a great American yogi. He conducts Raja Yoga (meditation) services at the Detroit Institute of Arts every Sunday. The dapper 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 during the early twenties. …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-seventies.
“Of course I am,” he admitted. “My wife and I celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary last April. I’ve never felt better in my life.”
The reason? A chance encounter with Yogananda, the great Hindu Master...

“Yogananda 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. I took aspirins for headaches, and laxative pills, and probably would have taken tranquilizers if they’d had them. …“I was a victim of inner pressures, too, like all my colleagues. The automobile giants made their fortunes — and then seldom lived to enjoy them… I was close to 40 when I met Yogananda…He changed the whole direction of my life…

“I retired in 1951,” said Black. “Then I stayed on the board of directors of my company for a while until Yogananda told me to give it up, too. He said my true work was to teach, not preach. I didn’t think I was competent to do that, but he just looked at me with his dark, compelling eyes, and said, ‘That’s what you think, Oliver.’ So I did what he said, and I’ve never been happier. …

“I have never had anything afford me greater joy than my work in yoga. You can’t love life unless you give. Everybody’s joy is my joy — and that’s the most delicious drink you can imagine. But very few have tasted it. Most men haven’t learned how to forego selfish habits in this lifetime. Yogananda used to say, ‘If you’re stingy with God, He’ll be stingy with you.’" . . .

💓 READ MORE of this very interesting article first published in Detroit Magazine, and SEE  a photocopy of a letter from Paramahansaji to Yogacharya Oliver; see more photos of him with and others
 * Yogacharya Black renewed his ordination to give Kriya Initiation every year through SRF, as do the monastics, until his passing
https://yoganandasite.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/secrets-of-yoga-from-detroits-mr-black-and-indias-yogananda-srf-magazine/

Can you tell me if Song of the Morning Ranch is SRF affiliated?

I've read with interest the Autobiography of Oliver Balck, he was a great soul. He exhibited some big pride in a sentence of his book, but his example was an overwhelmingly good one.

I don't know if the Song of the Morning Ranch community is still active...