Printed in the Spring 2024 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Abdill, Ed "Memories of Dora Kunz" Quest 112:2, pg 40-43
By Ed Abdill
I met Dora Kunz at the very first member meeting of the Theosophical Society I attended. I had been told that Dora was clairvoyant, and never having met a clairvoyant, I was fascinated. Dora and I soon became friends, and our friendship lasted until her death at age ninety-five in 1999. Dora and I got along well together, and we enjoyed a similar sense of humor.
In 1959, when I joined the New York Theosophical Society (NYTS), members ate dinner in our lecture hall before Wednesday night meetings. This was at 5:30 p.m. Dinner consisted of a vegetarian casserole, a salad, and dessert. In 1959, the cost for the dinner was $1.50. A meditation led by Dora followed dinner at 7:00 p.m., and the meeting began at 7:30. The casserole was prepared at home, one week by Dora and the next week by Emily Sellon. The two women lived next door to each other in Port Chester, a suburb of New York. After transporting dinner all the way to our lecture hall, on the train or by car, they would heat it in time for dinner.
Once I was in the kitchen with Dora when she dropped the casserole face down on the floor. Immediately she said, “Close the door.” I did, and she scooped it up, careful not to take the part that touched the floor. She put it back in the dish, and we all happily ate the scooped-up casserole, no one being the wiser.
Dora was born Theodora Sophia van Gelder in Java, Dutch East Indies, in 1904. She lived an isolated life on her father’s sugar plantation, with no playmates other than her brothers. Her mother was also clairvoyant, so when Dora saw a nature spirit or someone who’d recently died, so did her mother. It wasn’t until Dora grew older that she realized that others couldn’t see what she or her mother saw.
Dora’s experience was similar to that of a clairvoyant boy in nineteenth-century England who kept a diary. No one in his family had a clue about clairvoyance. Portions of the boy’s diary have been published anonymously in a book entitled The Boy Who Saw True. Portions of it are quite funny. Neither the boy nor his family had any words to describe what he saw.
One night, he wrote that he’d asked his mother why her “lights” (aura) turned pink when she kissed him goodnight. He added, “Mother looked at me strangely and said she would take me to the eye doctor next morning.” Another time, he saw his dead uncle sitting on a chair in their home. Someone was about to sit there, and the boy exclaimed, “Don’t sit on Uncle!” His parents reprimanded him for speaking in such a way about the dead.
Even as a child, Dora said whatever she decided to say, often shocking people with her bluntness. She told me that one day when she was in elementary school in Java, a teacher asked each child in her class what religion they were. When it was Dora’s turn, she said, “I’m a heathen.”
Dora told us her parents never cared what she ate, but they did care that she meditated. We asked how she meditated as a child. At five years old, her mother took her to the meditation room in their home and said, “Let’s just sit here and think about how much we love one another.”
When she was eleven, the prominent clairvoyant Theosophist Charles W. Leadbeater (often called CWL) asked Dora’s parents if he could take her to Australia to a young people’s group he had started. I believe he wanted to train clairvoyants and other psychic children for Theosophical work. Dora’s parents left the decision up to her, asking her to go to the meditation room and meditate on the proposal.
Dora was very shy at the time and spoke no English. Her parents were sure she wouldn’t go, but she surprised them by saying yes. She thought it was the right thing to do. Her parents kept their word and allowed her to travel to Australia with Leadbeater
CWL and the children lived on the outskirts of Sydney in a large building called the Manor. (Incidentally, when my wife, Mary, and I first traveled to Sydney, we stayed at the Manor, and Mary took a bath in a tub once used by Leadbeater.) The Manor training program took place at the time of the First World War. Many Australian soldiers were killed during the war, and mothers who knew about Leadbeater’s clairvoyant ability frequently sent him letters asking if he could contact their deceased sons and report back on how they were doing on the other side.
Leadbeater got so many of these letters that he couldn’t answer them all, so he turned them over to Dora and asked her to look up the dead and write to the mothers. She took on the job and wrote to the mothers. Typical of Dora, she called the task “writing about the Deaders.”
After she came to the United States to marry Fritz Kunz, an American, Dora learned American history from A to Z. She believed she should know the history of the country in which she lived. Politically, Dora and Fritz were both Democrats. Dora wrote frequent letters to her congressional and state representatives. Once, during a politically controversial time, she proffered some advice. She said we shouldn’t get angry while listening to a politician with whom we disagreed, but instead we should think of what we believe to be right.
Dora knew the damaging effects of anger and gave practical advice on how to overcome it. She was extremely practical and had common sense. If someone wanted to know the color of their aura, or something about their future, Dora was apt to say, “Don’t be an idiot,” and she’d walk away from them. If, however, someone was seriously ill, psychologically or physically, Dora would do whatever she could to help them. She never took money for her service. If anyone insisted on paying, she would tell them they could donate to the Theosophical Society.
Dora had an enormous vocabulary, but her strength wasn’t in words. In fact, she seldom finished a sentence and would frequently say, “You know what I mean,” even though the other person often didn’t. Also, Dora was Mrs. Malaprop personified. She would mix metaphors such as, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” and, “the acid test.” It would come out as, “That’s the acid pudding.” Dora had a keen sense of humor, and she could laugh at herself, especially when someone pointed out something like “the acid pudding” to her.
She also had the unique ability to see an individual’s potential almost at first clairvoyant glance. When Dora became president of the Theosophical Society in America, she asked me if I’d fill out her unexpired term as president of the NYTS. I agreed and was later elected president.
One day, Dora called me from the national headquarters to ask me if I would speak at the upcoming convention. She said I would have to talk for about twenty minutes, and I would be presenting with a lovely woman from the CIA. She knew I always cooperated with her, so when my response was no, I could almost hear her shock.
After a pause, I said, “Dora, I could never speak with someone from the CIA.”
She realized her mistake. She’d meant the CIIS—California Institute of Integral Studies—and she burst into her characteristic cackle of laughter. Of course, I agreed to do the talk, and it went well.
An amusing incident occurred at the NYTS many years ago, when Dora still lived in New York. We had an extremely difficult member who would follow anyone’s remarks with, “You said, but Theosophy clearly teaches . . .” The woman made the meetings so unpleasant that people didn’t want to attend, and attendance soon dwindled to three or four people.
One evening, Dora was upstairs in the library just above the lecture hall. The woman was at the meeting downstairs, once again pontificating. Although no one argued or raised their voices, people were very irritated with her. At the height of the tension, Dora came into the hall and defused the situation. I later asked her what had brought her downstairs at the precise moment we needed her. Dora said, “Well, I was sitting there and noticed a lot of prickly stuff coming up through the floor, and I thought, ‘Is that a Theosophical meeting going on down there?’”
Dora met Fritz Kunz in Australia, where they fell in love. They traveled to the United States to be married, and their wedding was hardly a traditional, joyous occasion. Both came to the wedding from different cities. A justice of the peace was to perform the ceremony. Apparently Dora was in a foul mood, so much so that the officiant stopped the ceremony and asked her, “Do you really want to get married?”
Of course she did, and the two of them made a delightful couple. They had one son, Johnny, and they remained together until Fritz died in 1972.
Dora had a habit of suddenly ending a phone conversation by simply hanging up. Here is an amusing report of a phone conversation she had with my dear friend, John Algeo, who passed away on October 13, 2019. John was a distinguished professor of English who also served as president of the Theosophical Society in America, and once as vice president of the international body.
Dora was a unique person. She made an indelible impression on almost everyone who knew her. For example, I remember with crystal clarity my first contact with Dora. It was over the telephone. I was sitting at supper one spring evening when the phone rang. I answered it, identified myself, and then the conversation went like this:
She: This is Dora Kunz calling from Wheaton.
Me: Oh, hello, how are you? It’s nice to . . .
She: I understand you can talk.
Me: Well, I do so from time to time. I’m not . . .
She: Can you come this summer to the convention and talk?
Me: Well, I suppose I could, though I hadn’t . . .
She: I understand you can talk on the Bhagavad Gita.
Me: Well, yes, I have done so at the Atlanta Lodge, but . . .
She: Fine, you’ll come then. (Click. The phone went dead.)
Of course, I went to convention and talked on the Bhagavad Gita.
For years, every telephone conversation I had with Dora went more or less like that one; it was not something Dora invented especially for me. It was her usual telephonic style. In fact, it was not until I had been in the president’s office at Olcott, the national headquarters of the TS in America, for about four years that I had a telephone conversation with Dora that she ended by saying, “Goodbye” before the inevitable click let me know the conversation was irrevocably over. I was so amazed by her goodbye that I went around the rest of the day telling people about it. And no one believed me.
Dora did not intend to be rude. She was just a remarkably focused person who had no small talk. She used to say of herself, with a cock of her head and wide-open eyes, “I’m a prrrractical girl.” Chitchat was just not in her line, not part of her modus operandi. If she ever found herself in a situation where the discourse veered toward what she considered the inane, her glance would dart about, she would give a twitch or two, and then, before anyone realized it, she would be gone. She seemed, in fact, just to dematerialize.
I learned to meditate in the weekly meditation class Dora conducted before the NYTS members’ meeting. Dora had a way of stimulating something within people that, for lack of a better expression, raised their consciousness. It wasn’t what she said, but what she did silently.
For me, meditation has been the pearl of great price. Through meditation, many thousands, including myself, have identified with the inner self. The awareness of the inner self does not come as soon as one begins a regular practice of meditation. A sense of peace is the first step. For most, it takes months or even years before a shift in consciousness arises, and when it does, suddenly there is only eternity. Out of necessity, we must revert to brain consciousness to live in this world. Yet we never forget that shift in consciousness. We can inhere in the eternal.
For inspiring me to meditate, I owe Dora a debt that I can only repay by helping others to learn to meditate. I facilitate meditation workshops and help individuals who ask my advice about meditation. Meditation changed me. Over the years I became more patient, did not panic as often, and became able to let anger and anxiety go more quickly.
When I first consulted Dora about a personal problem, she took one look at my aura and said, “Your experiences in the army disgusted you, didn’t they?” I didn’t need a clairvoyant to tell me that, but I was astounded at how quickly she recognized it, especially since I had never told her anything about my experiences in the army.
Dora had an uncanny ability to spot thought forms in the aura. Habitual thought patterns remain in the aura and are visible to a gifted clairvoyant. Clearly she saw my thoughts of unpleasant experiences in the army.
On another occasion, years later at our Theosophical camp in upstate New York, I consulted Dora about the possibility that I had prostate cancer.
Before she addressed my question, she said, “You’re depressed. You don’t want to do anything now, do you?”
I hadn’t even realized I was depressed, but no sooner had she said this, I knew she was right. She told me to look at the trees once I got home and notice how beautiful they were. I followed her advice, and a few days later, I saw her at the NYTS. She looked concerned, but quickly smiled and said, “Eddie, you look so much better.” I didn’t look any different physically, but my aura—my emotional and mental nature—had improved. I said, “Of course I do, Dora. I did what you asked me to do.”
When the Roman Catholic Church began saying mass after noon and before midnight, members of the Liberal Catholic Church (LCC) wanted to know why Bishop Charles Leadbeater, one of the church’s founders, stated that the mass should not be recited during those hours. Bishop Vreeda contacted Bishop Pitkin, who officiated in the NY LCC and authorized him to invite Dora to witness a mass held at 5:00 in the evening. Dora consented, and before the mass, she asked Bishop Pitkin what he wanted to know.
The bishop asked her to psychically investigate whether or not an angel came when invoked at the beginning of the mass. He also wanted to know whether nine orders of angels appeared just before the prayer of consecration and whether the wafers of the Host were consecrated. He also asked her to interrupt the service if she thought that for any reason he shouldn’t continue.
Bishop Pitkin later told me that Dora sat through the entire service respectfully. When asked for her assessment, she said the angels did appear and the wafers were consecrated. However, at the breaking of the Host, the energy that’s supposed to flood the neighborhood in blessing was grounded through the people present. In other words, the energy may have helped those present, but the energy intended to help the neighborhood had been lost.
Years later, I asked Dora about it, and I suggested that perhaps it had something to do with the position of the sun at the time. She agreed.
For more information on clairvoyant observations of the sacraments, I recommend Leadbeater’s Science of the Sacraments. The book describes what he and others saw happening on the inner planes during the administration of the sacraments. As a young girl, Dora, along with four other sensitives, assisted in the investigations. Before Leadbeater included anything in the book, he required that all five sensitives agree they had seen what he saw.
That’s the mark of a scientist—one in spirit, at least.
Ed Abdill is former vice president of the Theosophical Society in America. This passage has been excerpted from his new book, Journey to the Real: Memoirs of a Theosophist (Lady Jane Press; available on Amazon). His other works include The Secret Gateway: Modern Theosophy and the Ancient Wisdom Tradition.