- Leslie, would you like to tell us a little about your academic and professional background?
My background is exceptionally diverse. I have earned a B.S. in Biology (pre-med) because I planned to become a doctor. I decided against that at the time because my two children were still young and I was a single parent.
I immediately went to grad school and earned an M.A. in socio-cultural anthropology at SIU-Carbondale. Anthropology is the closest discipline to what Helena Blavatsky would be placed if she had earned a degree in that lifetime.
After graduating I returned to Chicago and became a medical transcriptionist for the next 5 years. I worked with top notch spine surgeons in the Chicago area. I decided I wanted to become a teacher. For that I felt drawn to Texas. I relocated to Texas in 1995 (October 31st) and within 3 years I was a certified and tenured science teacher here in Texas.
I later became certified to teach French but have not held a teaching job for French language.
Besides working as a transcriptionist for surgeons, I have worked as a copyeditor for accounting executives (CPAs), as a part of my new business.
- What is your most favorite discipline of study?
I love history, and the Classics.
- How was the idea of Dinner With Da Vinci conceived?
While teaching science at an inner city school I had the chance to spend a week at NASA in Houston. Just before that I decided I would write: A year in the life of a science teacher-type book. So that year I made daily entries to my journal. I told the person in the book, my Bobby character, that I was writing this book and that everything that he said to each other and/or experienced would be a part of the book.
During that time period (2000) little did I know but Dan Brown was also working on a book that involved physicists: Angels and Demons. But in that year I discovered the reborn Leonardo Da Vinci. I took or rather borrowed this chapter, originally titled: Summer 2000, and placed it in Dinner With Da Vinci and it became the first chapter of the book.
The publishers then thought that should be the title of the book. I wanted the title: Androgyny.
- Do you agree that your book is way too off the exoteric publishing matter? (explain what makes it so different)
This book is esoteric in nature—I don’t deny that. But nothing is too anything not to become published. It is much in the vein of Virginia Woolf, who wrote and published her journals for the world to read.
What makes my book so different is that I have mined it for spiritual content. This is the same thing that I have done with some of the fiction that I analyze. I used the writings of Zadie Smith to show that she was the rebirth (I believe) of Sylvia Plath.
I have a new chapter that is already written and will be downloadable at my new Web site: thechurchofanswers.com about a famous past life for Dan Brown. It was conceived in the same way as my other works: through revelation, study, and dreams (which are a component of prophecy).
- So why this uniqueness?
I am unique in the same way that Blavatsky was unique. I am fulfilling what she started in her life as a Russian occultist.
- Do you claim that Dinner With Da Vinci has an appeal to the general readership? (Had you a target audience in mind while writing it?)
Yes, I do claim that it has an appeal to a general readership. At least I hope that it does. My new Web site has the subtitle: Rational Christians Reborn. Why? Because these are the people I hope to attract. We are the rational Christians who are reborn. So when I hear of a scandal in any one particular church I think, “hmm, that’s good for business.” (I was wrong--oh boy).
But seriously, the Christian world is my target audience. I wonder did Dan Brown know that Christianity would catch fire about his book. My book is considerably more cerebral than his book, that’s the difference.
How much of religious influence you think you had in pursuing the concept of rebirth?
I was born and raised Roman Catholic. I took the sacraments up to Confirmation. We were never taught anything about rebirth in Catholic school, which I attended for twelve years.
Basically, the teachings of reincarnation and rebirth have been taken out of the Western Christian tradition. They have been replaced instead with communion and confession. The religious leaders and the church fathers have had to replace this essential teaching with something. When I told my students that I was starting an online church they immediately asked me: Will you have communion online, or how? I thought that was a great question. When I realized that this has been subsumed in Christianity I had to come up with what it has been replaced with. My students gave me the answer. I have decided to call that section “eye contact.”
In the tradition that I follow now: Sant Mat, or Radhasoami, we believe that through eye contact the soul of one individual makes a spiritual connection with another. That is my substitute for communion.
- So what's the story of rebirth?
This is related to karma. It is therefore complex. It is a deeply complex study and that is why it has taken me 35 years to write about it. I have written extensively about the first law of rebirth and its connection to karma and Sufi religious traditions. It will be available at thechurch ofanswers.com under “The Law of Karma.”
- John F Kennedy appears the person, or persons if you allow, with which your book's subject appears most engaged. Any explanation why?
JFK is my life of apotheosis. I trace many lifetimes in the book, but not as deeply. I have used four lifetimes as the cornerstone for this study: my present life, John F. Kennedy, Ruth Merton (mother of Thomas Merton), and Helena P. Blavatsky. There is an overlap between the lives of Ruth Merton and HPB of about 3 years. There is also an overlap of this life with that of JFK of ten years. The Buddhists call this bilocation or also split soul. I have multiple journal entries in which I recall that I split my soul into two distinct individuals.
- What good will it do if we happen to recognize a rebirth of our own or some one else's?
The writer of the Bailey books: Alice A. Bailey wrote that Blavatsky and her work would be vindicated. She also made a prophecy that the laws of rebirth would be given out to the world. There is also a popular prophecy that eventually people would take up the study of their past lives as part of the new education in the future.
I predict that people will not have to study so much in the future. They will be able to access automatically all information on the mental plane. It will be similar to how we use computers except that it will be direct. This is also the definition of intuition: direction perception/knowledge. I believe that humanity is going in that direction.
I also see a dark side of this new knowledge: Black magic will become more widespread and more powerful. This can lead to people being forced from their bodies or taken over by another entity, much like science fiction movies show.
Finally, when the smoke clears, there will be little or no need for the astral plane, except as a place of storage and learning until the applicant can work purely on the mental plane.
- Have you shared your ideas of this concept with other scholars, especially psychologists and scientists etc? (what was their reaction?)
It was more like the other way around. I have a bibliography in the book that is ten pages long. If I had included everything that I had ever read or that influenced this book it could have been 25 pages long. I am a voracious reader of history, the Classics and autobiographies, to name a few.
- What plans you have for furthering your research in this direction and for future writing quests?
My brother and I (whom I identify as Joe Kennedy, Jr.) plan to collaborate in an effort to prove that we are direct descendants of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. We have strong evidence that one of their cousins fathered children by a slave who in turn became the patriarch of our family. His name was Butler Adams. At one time they were one of the wealthiest black families in Chicago.
Thank you for sparing your precious time!
