00:00:06 Yusuf: What if love is not something we have to earn or even learn? What if it is not fragile, conditional or feeling, but woven into the very fabric of existence itself?

00:00:22 Yusuf: Welcome to sacred Harmony, where we explore the subtle threads that connect spirit, story, and healing. I'm Yusuf and today I'm joined by Glenn Aparicio Perry, author of Original Love The Timeless Source of Fullness. Glenn is a scholar, philosopher, and spiritual thinker whose work bridges indigenous wisdom, Western philosophy, and contemplative traditions. In this episode, we are diving into the origin of original love. What unites his trilogy of books, and why he describes original love as a foundational vibration in the cosmos itself. With that, I welcome my guest, Glenn, to the show.

00:01:13 Glenn Aparicio Parry: Welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very, very pleased and honored to be here.

00:01:21 Yusuf: Perfect.

00:01:22 Glenn Aparicio Parry: My dog Momo is also here. He wants to introduce himself. Oops. Can't get him on.

00:01:31 Yusuf: So before we step into philosophy, On a personal level, when you hear the phrase original love, what feeling arises in you right now?

00:01:43 Glenn Aparicio Parry: Hmm, a feeling of power. Love is the most powerful force in the cosmos. The most powerful force in the cosmos. I have nothing to do with the title of Original Love, except that my, you know, seven years ago, my wife Tomiko one morning said, just out of the blue, you're going to write a book called Original Love. And she's never predicted my my, uh, future before then or since. Really, in that way. Um, but she did that morning, and I knew it was important. So I opened up a computer and started a file called Original Love, and I went back to writing the book I was writing called Original Politics. Then a year later, I'm in Taos, New Mexico, and I'm speaking to a woman named Jean Ellis, and she's asking me if I want to teach at UNM Taos, where she taught, and she interrupts herself in the middle of a sentence and she says, you are going to write a book called Original Love. And it's the third book in a three part series with the word original in the title. See, that's the first time I knew I was ever writing a trilogy, and it's the first time I really came into awareness. Uh, the power of what this message was that was coming through. Um, and in fact, the funny part about this story is I had changed the title from Original Politics, the book prior to this to Sacred Politics, and that was the title when Select Books gave me a book deal. And so now, with these two pronouncements from the cosmos, I knew I needed to change it back. So I did. And as soon as I did, I got my own download for how to write the book. Original love. I woke up one morning and I had been filled with dreams. Or just a little bit of a vision. And I knew that this was going to be a book. Not about romantic love, or at least not primarily because romantic love counts as part of something that opens us up to a larger force, but that it would mainly be about remembrance for love for Mother Earth. And that's how it began. That's how it began. So that's what the vibration is. When I feel original love. I feel so full. It reminds me of what grandfather Leon Secretario, a dear elder to me, said when he was describing the cosmos. And he would say that it's always been here. It's always been here. It wasn't a creation. It was a blessing. Um, and he spoke about the unheard sound of creation. And it was so beautiful. It was like a leaf unfurling in the spring. The sound that's made at the moment of conception. These are the kinds of things that are evoked when I contemplate original love. It's well beyond what I can imagine, though. Okay, I hope that helps. Yeah.

00:05:29 Yusuf: So what you are describing reframes love not as something that emerges between separate beings, but something more primordial, more foundational that than relationship itself.

00:05:49 Glenn Aparicio Parry: Yes, Yes, it's it's the. The ancients understood this. Okay. Were you were in India? It's very well understood. Sanskrit is a sacred language. It's a language that evokes vibration in the cosmos. The same is true for, uh, Native American languages like Navajo or like, you know, I mean, Anishinaabe languages. Uh, uh, any of those languages evoke vibrations in the cosmos, in themselves. English, which we're speaking in now, is more of a representational language. It's a little bit removed from that. It still can do it in its vowels, in its vowels. It still has much power, much power. And you can use English language in a powerful way, but it has certain limits. It has certain limits. Two noun heavy. Yeah, that's how I got started on this path, because we would do dialogue circles with I was the one who convened them, but I didn't start them. They started before me, um, in nineteen ninety two, when Leroy Little Bear approached David Bohm, along with David Peat, and began this meeting of the minds between between, uh, native scientists. And I say the word scientist because the word science just means to know from the Latin ciencia. Uh, so native scientists and Western scientists, primarily quantum physicists, and they had these beautiful dialogues which, which are organization that I founded, seed inherited. And we had thirteen years of these dialogues and it was so beautiful, so beautiful. And they came to many points of agreement, many points of agreement, including that everything in the cosmos is vibration.

00:08:06 Yusuf: You say that original love is a foundational vibration in the cosmos. I want to know when you use the word vibration, what are you pointing towards? Like is it is this metaphorical metaphysical or or something else or all of them?

00:08:26 Glenn Aparicio Parry: No, it's not a metaphorical. It's real. Um, it is metaphysical, perhaps. I mean, because it is beyond physical. That's why I was speaking earlier about the unheard sound of creation. Um, but there is also, uh, heard sounds that are beautiful sounds. I've been chanting every since you're. You're calling me from India. You know, I've been chanting in Sanskrit every morning since nineteen eighty three because I went to the California Institute of Integral Studies, which was formerly the California Institute of Asian Studies, and it was founded by Haridas Choudhury. I don't know if you're aware of. See, I, I, I now am a faculty member. An adjunct faculty member. But but, uh, um, there was a professor there that taught, uh, a healing chant, and it goes like this. Do you mind if I chant?

00:09:32 Yusuf: Yeah.

00:09:33 Glenn Aparicio Parry: Please. On your sacred Harmony show. It sounds seems appropriate. Uh. That I am become your Jama. Him. Or. Abandon me. You. Are. So wise. Why? Thank you. You may have heard that Chantal told a little bit differently. The ending in particular, I see. I hear people do that chant. And it doesn't end with soir. Soir? I don't know if that's the way I learned it. And that's supposed to be very good for the throat chakra. So I continue to to do that. Um, and uh, uh, it's it's really, uh, those are beautiful vibrations. Those are beautiful vibrations.

00:10:49 Yusuf: Oh, yeah. When you were chanting those. I was listening very carefully. And I am feeling peaceful for after those chants.

00:11:02 Glenn Aparicio Parry: Mm. Good, good. That's what its intent is. It's very much a healing chant. Very much healing chant. I've heard it chanted when people are near the transition, crossing over. That's one of the ways that that chant is used. But not the only way. Um, and, uh, it's also a healing chant that does balance, harmonize. You know, it's very important. Harmony is very important. The title of your show, one of the things that, uh, I've examined in the past is thought, and particularly, uh, modern thought is often described as rational thought. Um, and, and the thing that people miss is that the very word rational comes from ratio, which. So originally rational thought was about divine proportionality, it was about harmony, it was about proportion. Um, um, that's something I learned from David Bohm, who was writing and looked at the etymology of words a lot. And so, uh, I'm also a, uh, I happen to be president of the Jean Gebser Society, and I am not the best Gebser scholar. But are you familiar with Jean Gebser work?

00:12:42 Yusuf: No. So sorry.

00:12:43 Glenn Aparicio Parry: No. Okay, well, Jean Gebser was a Swiss German philosopher who, in the middle of the twentieth century, wrote a book that was not translated into English for a very long time, but it was eventually translated into English in nineteen eighty five as the ever present origin, the ever present origin. So that meant a lot to me too. Um, because when in German the. And I'm going to not pronounce this exactly correctly, but the German word is something like Hirschsprung. Hirschsprung means the eternal spring, the wellspring from which things emanate from. So this original vibration, this original love, is the Hirschsprung. It's where everything comes from. Love is what creates the cosmos. The. The Greeks knew this. The ancient Greeks Empedocles spoke about the origin of the cosmos coming from the four roots. Later on, we call this the four element theory. But he actually called them the Four roots, and he named them after gods and goddesses Zeus, Hera, nests, and Adonis. Um, and he said that when the cosmos was being formed, there were just the four roots and love. Love was what brought the elements together. Love is what brought the roots together. Love is what unites. Love is what you dissolves difference. But here's the funny thing about it. Empedocles said that the cosmos was not fully formed until something else came into the picture, which he called strife. So once, once strife comes into the picture, love begets strife, and strife begets love. Strife is what pulls the elements apart. That's what makes for separation, division, hatred even. But love is what unites them back together. But as much as we don't like it when we're going through strife, we need it. That's how we learn. That's how we come into, uh, our full experience as humans while we are in the body on this planet. So we need strife. Um, so that's one story, you know, um, there's a lot of stories there. Uh, some of my favorite stories are the native stories, like Spider Woman and that one. Really? There's some. There's some equivalents in Indian tradition. Netra. Right. I mean, Netra, but but spider woman, I a spider woman weaves the cosmos from her belly. And what I love about that story is that is that everything is one. Um, I'm not as I'm not as drawn to stories that speak about a God like figure that's standing outside the cosmos and and creating something. Um, although I love Michelangelo's artwork in the Sistine Chapel, where he has God in empowering man, that's beautiful. So that's probably the most beautiful image I've ever seen of that kind of creation. But what appeals to me the most is this weaving of the cosmos from one's belly. And, uh, that that makes sense to me. That makes sense to me. To you?

00:16:48 Yusuf: Uh, I have never thought of this idea. And this is the first time that I'm encountering it, so I might need the whole story, or at least the whole narrative, to understand it.

00:17:01 Glenn Aparicio Parry: Well, can I show people a photo of the book? Do you mind? Yeah, please. This is a book that's being released tomorrow, and, uh, it's original love. The timeless source of wholeness. And the, uh, the artist who who created the cover, uh, is Shizuko. Takahashi. Um, and and, uh, my wife Tomiko found this artwork, and it really, really is beautiful.

00:17:38 Yusuf: Yeah, indeed.

00:17:39 Glenn Aparicio Parry: It reminds me of a few things that I do use in the book, because I feel that love is such a powerful force that it can only really adequately be described as the beauty of nature. And I don't mean fully described, but the. But we can give ourselves a glimpse of the immense beauty of love. If we look at nature and looking at the moon. The moon is an important symbol in this book because and this is something I'm going to tell you that isn't in the book. But Grandfather Leon, who I mentioned earlier, who is the the head man of the Canyon Band of Navajo in New Mexico. Only about thirty miles from here, actually. He always told he told me and told others that you could send your thoughts through the moon. If you wanted to communicate to someone else. Why did he say that? Because for the Navajo, light is consciousness. Light is consciousness. And what is the moon? The moon is a reflector. A mass reflector of light. The moon is like in love with the Earth. The moon circles the Earth. The moon is very aware of what's coming, what's going on in the Earth. And the moon is a reflector of light. So it's sending back the light, the consciousness back to the planet. And so if you send your thoughts through the moon, then it can reflect it back. Why is the moon always used so often in song to describe love? When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie? It's summery, you know. That is the. That's the saying, right? That's the song. It was. It was in a beautiful movie called Moonstruck. If you have ever seen that movie. Uh, she is in the movie. Um. And it's true. The moon has that power. And Rumi, the poet, wrote about the moon. He wrote about the moon so beautifully. He. He wrote a poem called Opening the Love Window. And he said at night, I, I asked the moon to come and press its face against mine. And the. And he and he speaks about the moon. Won't use the door, only the window. So that's why the moon opens up the love window. And what? That just gives me chills. That just gives me chills. And it reminds me of what my wife, Tomiko said about a Japanese professor of philosophy in the Meiji era. A long time ago, his name was Natsume Soseki, and Natsume Soseki was a professor of literature, but he also was a professor of English, and he assigned to his students the translation of the English words I love you. And his students came back and they, they said, Kimi o isu. And the reason why they said that is Kimi means you and I means love. So it's a literal translation Kimi o isu um, but uh uh, so Saki says, no, that is not the correct translation. The right translation is not new, and that in English means the moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it? The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it? And so that's why this book, original of the Timeless Source of Wholeness, has the moon on the cover. It had to have the moon on the cover, I knew that. Um, and, uh, and and my beloved wife, Tomiko found this artist who does, I don't know, she does paintings of flowers in the who are lit by the moon. Uh, just that evoked the natural world to me. And so many people think of love when they think of flowers. This is near Valentine's Day, too, so that's a time to give flowers. And flowers are so beautiful like that, as we know. Um, and. Wow. Uh, I know this book is very powerful, and I know it's not because of me personally. It's something that's coming through me. And I'm just I feel blessed to be able to be given the assignment by the ancestors that came through my wife. I think my wife is the one who told me that so that I would listen. But it's a big responsibility to bring this, the birth of this book into the world. And I know people are going to love the book. Um, and I pray that it's healing for them and all their relations, that it helps them in their love lives and it helps them in their community, and it helps all of the natural world. I hope it helps you, my friend Yusuf. And your family and all your relations.

00:23:46 Yusuf: Thank you so much for joining us on sacred sacred Harmony today.

00:23:52 Glenn Aparicio Parry: You're most welcome.

00:23:54 Yusuf: And to everyone listening, if today's conversation stirs something in you, let it settle gently. Notice where love already exists in your breath, in the space around you. In the quiet awareness beneath thought. Until next time. May you move through the world remembering that wholeness was never truly lost. It was waiting to be felt again.