Spiritual Leader J. Jaye Gold gives lecture on inner peace

From growing up in the Bronx in an immigrant family composed of Jews, Muslims and Orthodox Christians to studying at a 500-year-old Sufi school in Afghanistan in his 20s, spiritual leader J. Jaye Gold has acquired myriad life experiences. His colorful life has led him to write books on a wide range of topics, from life and travel to financial espionage and poker. Gold brought his life experiences to USC on Monday night, leading a discussion with Dean of Religious Life Varun Soni on the connection between world peace and inner peace.

“I think it’s easier to understand things if you read it in a story,” Gold said. “I’ve learned a lot from movies and words and songs and poetry … because in those kinds of venues you can extract what means something to you, and somebody’s not telling you what to think.”

For this reason, Gold does not consider his books instructional.

“I don’t tell people what to do in books,” Gold said. “I use the books more for trying to get people enthusiastic. There’s other ways of looking at life.”

The majority of Gold’s works became books unintentionally. Only The Roca Group: A Tale of Financial Espionage was intentionally written into a book. The others were a compilation of short writings he had written over time, Gold said.

As he wrote about in his newest autobiography Justin Time, which came out in November 2016, his way of thinking changed greatly as he transitioned from a child growing up in the Bronx to a spiritual teacher.

“I was a little bit dense and a little bit not so exploratory and not so willing to look at things in a different way, so it took that travel and took meeting new people,” Gold said.

He credits his change in thought to a man he met in South America during his 20s.

“He would call my attention to things that I was basically oblivious of, usually small things,” Gold said. “He would call embarrassment ‘little death,’ and you don’t have to go through the big death because if you feel embarrassed and people around you feel a little bit of that death, it’s heavy and we do everything we can to avoid that embarrassment.”

Once Gold changed his perspectives, he began moving negative obstacles from his life, focusing instead on meditation and other forms of reflection.

Gold believes that humanity is a gift, and should remain a central thought in people’s minds.

“Like you’re a great athlete, that’s ok, but if you weren’t a human being you couldn’t be a great athlete,” he said. “I have come to value having a human life far above all those other things so I don’t really feel the separation that plagues the world right now in so many ways.”

During his talk at USC, Gold claimed that inner peace is the solution to social harmony and urged others to leave things like fear and jealousy behind.

He also stressed the importance of exploration and taking chances before beginning introspection.

“The going-out process of learning to control your environment, to not feel victim to that environment, to not feel like less than that environment and the process of coming home is much more a process of relinquishing control,” Gold said.

In light of current events, Gold believes it is important for others to realize that they are united by humanity.

“People are neglected and immigrants are neglected and gay people are neglected and women are neglected,” Gold said. “There are so many people that are neglected, but if people really recognize that we’re all in this together as human beings not in a philosophical way but an actual way, it could have a little bit of an impact.”