Dowling claimed that at the age of thirteen, in his first public debate, he took the negative side against a Presbyterian elder on "The Everlasting Punishment of the Wicked.
He entered the United States Army at the age of twenty, as a chaplain, and served in this capacity to the end of the Civil War.
The publisher's introduction to Biopneuma says that Levi taught chemistry, toxicology, physiology, histology, and lectured on the use of electricity in medicine.
He claimed to have spent forty years in study and silent meditation, and that he eventually reached a stage of spiritual consciousness that permitted him to enter the domain of the superfine ethers he had referred to, and become familiar with their mysteries.
He said that he spent many months transcribing the events he supposedly witnessed in what he called "The Book of God's Remembrance" or the akashic records.
He claimed to have learned from those visions that the imaginings of his boyhood days were founded upon veritable facts, and that every thought of every living thing is in the akashic record.
Businesses, factories, water, power, streets, parks, and a top university were expected to follow, but the community was not a success.
In a biographical sketch included in the original publication of Self-culture, Levi is said to have taught and lectured medical students in the use of electricity in medicine.