An Interview with Phil Jones

by Brent Raynes

Phil Jones is both an Australian sound therapist and, for the past four decades, a professional recording artist. My wife Joan and I recently (12/08/06) attended his workshop “Discovering the Sacredness of Breath and Sound: A Spiritual Australian Didgeridoo Experience,” and what a wonderful experience it was! Phil travels all over giving these workshops. We felt blessed to have caught up with him in Columbia, Tennessee, at a meeting place of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. What Phil shares in this revealing interview is powerful and thought-provoking.

Visit his website at: http://www.philjonesmusic.com/

His email address is: oz@newmex.com

Editor: You’re from Australia, and back in the 1960s you had a Blues hit with your band Phil Jones and the Unknown Blues, a hit that was considered by many to be one of the forerunners of the Australian Blues. Then you moved to England, became a lead singer for Quintessence (Island Records), and for seven years you studied Bhakti yoga under a Hindu saint named Swami Ambikananda, incorporating Indian mantras into your music.

How did all of this prepare you for your future and current role as a vibrational sound therapist and your deep passion for the Australian didgeridoo?

Phil Jones: I think that probably having a strong grounding in the spiritual teachings of Swami Ambikananda made me open and receptive to what the didgeridoo could offer because it is a powerful tool for accelerating the meditational process, for relaxation, for de-stressing, for self-empowerment, a deeper connection with your concept of a Higher Power, and without that deep, mystical grounding I think that I probably either would not have been interested in it or would have approached it more from a musical instrument perspective. Which it is, and I respect that, as I am a musician, but it is really a shamanic tool from my point of view, that it is designed to enhance ones intuitive awareness or intuitive abilities.

Editor: How did you and the didgeridoo come together, and how has it changed your life?

Phil Jones: Well, the way that I feel that it has shifted my consciousness is that it has given me a much greater sense of clarity and focus. In that clarity and focus, whatever you place into that clear screen of consciousness leaves an imprint, an impression, and it manifests in your life based on the principle of as you think so you become. If you can go deep into that clear focused state of consciousness, the thoughts that you place in there will manifest. So as we are focusing on a positive connection with spirit, as we do that that connection becomes more apparent, it becomes deeper, it becomes clearer and more focused because as I think so I become.

It could be utilized for an artistic connection. It could be utilized for a deeper connection with significant others, or humanity, a deeper connection with the planet, or a deeper connection with cosmic awareness. That’s how it shifted my consciousness. It self-empowered me to a point where it allowed me to do what I would like to do in life, to be happy and fulfilled doing the workshops and sharing with other people what I think this instrument can do for them, that it is a self-healing and self-empowering tool.

Editor: What have some of your most memorable experiences and insights with the didgeridoo been, and please don’t leave out any interesting details of interactions you’ve had with the aboriginals of Australia.

Phil Jones: My approach to the instrument is primarily self-empowering. I used to feel, in the early days of using it, that it was something that I should use to heal other people. The deeper I went into it it became apparent that this was really designed for self-healing and self-empowerment, and so for several years now I’ve been encouraging people to use this as a self-healing tool.

It is a combination of breath, harmonics, and primordial sound that make it healing, self-healing, and an accelerator into deep states of meditative awareness.

So we could say that, for example, I had a test done on me recently in Memphis and a doctor there had worked out a software program and is able to read the brainwaves, like the beta waves, alpha, theta, and delta. As you get into delta and theta it’s a very deep state of consciousness. We put these wires on me and right afterwards you get these brainwaves and they were all spiking, moving along, and I sat quietly and it shifted a little, and once I played the didgeridoo to get a contrast, suddenly the delta waves almost flat lined. It was just like it had cleared all of that spike, all of the monkey chatter. My fingers were wired up as well as my head, and the fingers were to measure stress, and the stress level went down at a 45 degree angle. So all of those things that I had said about it were manifested in a scientific way. This thing does change you. It relaxes hard muscles, lowers high blood pressure, enhances the lymph’s ability to cleanse the blood and organs, stimulates the pituitary, which is the sixth chakra, the Third Eye, a point of intense focus and balance that must be acquired to go deep into meditation.

It automatically brings you to that place. I think it’s a combination of the breath, primordial sound, and harmonics.

Editor: During my recent attendance at your workshop you had described the health benefits of the didgeridoo, cited in fact by the British Medical Association and others.

Phil Jones: Oh yeah. Recently, it was written in the British medical journal that this instrument significantly lowers snoring in sleep apnea, which is a great thing for people who suffer from sleep apnea because the C-pap machine is rejected by around 75 percent of the people that it is subscribed to. It’s an oxygen mask. A doctor called me from Chicago and he said that he had read the article and been using the didgeridoo and he said that it was a breakthrough in his practice. He’s going to prescribe it to a lot of people, and hopefully he’ll get it on insurance. (laughs) Imagine people going into Walgreens with a prescription for one didgeridoo.

Editor: Yeah, one didgeridoo to go!

Okay now at your workshop you said that people can be profoundly affected by their didgeridoo experiences with reactions like “I know that sound,” and “it brought tears to my eyes.” Over the years, you’ve no doubt heard a wide range of different testimonials on this subject. Could you give us an example or two of certain memorable ones, and any patterns that you’ve noticed?

Phil Jones: I think that when people have a reaction that way I think that it’s stirring cellular memory. I think we bring previous impressions with us, because obviously I believe in reincarnation of the soul, the evolution of soul consciousness as we’re born into the human form. In each life we work to elevate our consciousness to a higher level. I think that a lot of people who have that familiarity with the instrument have heard it before in another life, or have experienced it or have played it. I think that we’ve all had many lives together on planet earth and probably other planets as well. I don’t know, but that’s the only way that I can interpret it, because I’ve seen a lot of people from family members to strangers who when they hear the didgeridoo, I’ve seen them cry or they say, “I know that sound.” They feel a tremendous familiarity with it. It’s definitely an ancient sound. There’s no real way of knowing how long the native people have been playing it, but I think that a conservative estimate is about 10,000 years. Their remains have been officially carbon dated at 50,000 years in Australia, so 10,000 years is probably a very conservative estimate.

Editor: You do a lot of presentations. I think you said about a hundred

Phil Jones: A year.

Editor: You travel all over the U.S.

Phil Jones: Yup.

Editor: You’re a frequent guest speaker at Deepak Chopra’s Center for Well Being.

Phil Jones: I was.

Editor: It sounds like a lot of work. Do you ever get burned out, or does the very nature of your work keep that from happening?

Phil Jones: I wouldn’t do it if the work wasn’t invigorating and energizing, but I would be telling a fib if I didn’t say that yes the schedule definitely is pushing the envelope because you’re not just doing the work, you’ve got to travel hundreds of miles and the other side of the coin is all of the physical labor that’s required in getting from one place to another.

Editor: It sounds like a lot of travel.

Phil Jones: It is a lot of travel. And, of course, I’m a recording artist, so I’m always in the middle of recording projects and writing music as well.

Editor: I suppose the travel gives a little time for creative inspiration and such?

Phil Jones: The travel involves me driving, but yeah, I’ve written several songs that way. Good ones too, and recorded them. They were written while driving down the highway.

Editor: In Jonathan Goldman’s book Healing Sounds, he described meeting a man named Julius, who happened to be from Australia, and according to this source, who claimed to have lived with aboriginal people and learned about their use of the didgeridoo, and that there originally was a “Dreamtime” race known as the Wandina. When the aboriginal people came along the Wandjina were just moving away, but they left with them the gift of a didgeridoo. The story goes that when the didgeridoo was sounded it created a kind of interdimensional window that allowed the Wandjina to travel to the aboriginals and vice versa. I wondered if you had ever heard any of those kinds of stories?

Phil Jones: The Wandjina are the beings that bring the rain, they travel on lightning bolts. You see drawings of them on the cave walls. They look like they’ve got space helmets on, usually with rays of light or whatever coming out of their head.

The stories are very interesting and fascinating, but really it’s more of a here and now instrument for me. I’m not that interested in those kinds of stories because I’ve got one in my hands, I can pick it up and I can play it, and I can feel what these people are romanticizing about. I’m actually practical-izing it in the now, in the year 2007, not in the year 10,000 B.C. I’m doing it now, and anyone who wants to follow a program like I’m sharing can do the same thing.

I think it’s probably true that there were space beings and they may have seeded the planet, and they may have been the forefathers of the native people, or of the whole human race for all I know, and they may have gifted the didge, but really it doesn’t really make much difference if I wasn’t there.

I’m here, I’ve got the didge, and I know what it can do. It is an interdimensional instrument. There is no doubt.

Editor: What are some common misconceptions about the didgeridoo that you’ve encountered?

Phil Jones: Well, I always feel that a lot of Westerners will approach it as a musical instrument, which it is, but there are two sides of the coin. It is a shamanic tool, and I find that folks who approach it as a Western thing become technically competitive and want to be the fastest, best, smartest wiz kid on the block, and they don’t really have a grounding in the spiritual or shamanic aspects of the instrument, and I kind of feel sorry for them because they’re missing the point of what this thing can really do for you. I’m not saying that they’re not feeling anything from it, but when you don’t have that spiritual grounding and you’re trying to be flashy and technical, you’re kind of like skating on the ice. You haven’t really jumped into the water with this thing yet.

So I always encourage people that if they want to be a great technical player, if that’s really their interest, then start from the ground up. Start by relaxing in meditation with your instrument, relaxing the breath, relaxing the harmonics, learning how to project your thoughts and how to visualize them so that you can manifest in your life what you need to be happy and fulfilled.

In aboriginal society men and women of high order are those who are most self-empowered. So self-empowerment is very important to them. They also believed that the most powerful influence in your life is what you think. So here they were understanding the power of thought, honoring self-empowerment, and they have an instrument that, from my perspective, was designed to enhance these qualities. Again, self-empowerment and manifesting in your life what you need to be happy and fulfilled. I think that these are very grounded, lofty concepts.

Editor: Yes, and I know that in your workshop that you had said that you had gotten into some serious meditational work in England with the Hindu teacher and that when you experienced the didgeridoo and got into that, that it helped you greatly.

Phil Jones: Exactly. What might have taken half an hour, an hour, or an hour and a half, I reach basically in about 90 seconds now. For me it is a quantum leap. If I can get there in a shorter amount of time then I’m going to do it, and if I can go deeper in a shorter amount of time I’m going to do it. So for me a deep meditation can be about ten minutes, at the most. It’s fairly instant for me now. I’m very attuned to the instrument that I have. It’s only one note, so you don’t have to be a musician to play it. You play it intuitively. You blow in it and very quickly I’m finding myself in that place that it could have taken a half hour or an hour previously to have reached.

And then the way that I work my meditation and which I share in workshops is that we work on re-enforcing spiritual commitment, forgiveness and cutting the shackles of human karma, and we invoke the consciousness of the divine.

Editor: I recall how one woman at the workshop was talking about colors around her third eye and you explained about the energy, how you often develop some sort of a third eye focus, as I recall.

Phil Jones: Yes, what this instrument does is it stimulates the pituitary gland, which correlates with the sixth chakra, the third eye, so it brings you into intense focus very quickly. The third eye, or the sixth chakra, is the point of focus in yoga. It must be achieved, mastered, or attained by any seeker who is looking to transcend into the ethereal states of consciousness. You can’t go there with a busy mind. At some point, you have to master the mind. This instrument accelerates that process. You become master of your mind. I always say I gave a lot of my power away to sensory perception and sensory gratification. Now I’m regaining my power by moving deeper into spiritual consciousness and regaining that power that I may have traded off. Ambikananda said human beings have traded their divine inheritance for wampum. Okay, if that’s the case then I want to get it back. The only way for me to do that is to get clarity, focus, and become master of the mind. I want to master the programs that I have put into my mind over the years that relate specifically to sensory perception and gratification. I would like to have spiritual perception and spiritual connection. I would like to have that in the human form. I don’t want to have to wait until I cross over in order to experience that. I would like to have that in the human form, which I think is the ultimate purpose of human life, to experience your divine soul conscious nature while in the human form. For me to do that, it requires shifting a lot of the programs that I’ve put in over the years, and to do that I’ve got to be master of my mind. Not easy! I gave permission to these programs to run my life and now I’m shifting those programs and I’m reprogramming and changing some of the programs that are in there to be more aligned with what I believe is the fulfillment of ones highest purpose, and that is the self-realization of the divine soul conscious connection that we all have. I think that this is ultimately where humanity is evolving to. We go through some dark patches and come out the other end. We learn something and move onto the next level of our journey, as a human community. Individually we all make progress in our own individual ways.