Printed in the Fall 2021 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Abdill, Ed, "Recollections of Dora Van Gelder Kunz" Quest 108:4, pg 10-11
Members’ Forum
Ed Abdill
I was just twenty-four years old when I joined the New York Theosophical Society, and I met Dora Van Gelder Kunz on the very first members’ meeting that I attended. In those days, we had a vegetarian dinner before the meeting, and Dora was in the serving line. We soon formed a friendship that lasted about forty years.
Dora was born in Java, Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), in 1904. Her parents were members of the Theosophical Society, and as soon as Dora was old enough to join, she did. Like her mother, Dora was born clairvoyant. Since she and her family lived on a remote sugar plantation owned by her father, neighbors were not close by, and she had no playmates. When Dora saw a recently deceased person, so did her mother. Consequently, Dora thought everyone saw what she and her mother saw. It was only as an older child that she realized that clairvoyance is rare. In later life, Dora was elected president of the New York Theosophical Society, and then president of the Theosophical Society in America, where she served four terms from 1975 to 1987. With Dolores Krieger, she founded the healing modality Therapeutic Touch (see review on page 40). She died in 1999.
As a gifted clairvoyant, Dora helped hundreds, if not thousands, of people deal with physical and psychological problems. I consulted her on a few occasions and was amazed at her ability to spot my problems immediately. On one occasion I thought I might have prostate cancer, so while at Pumpkin Hollow, I asked Dora to take a look at me. Rather than mention the possible cancer, she immediately said, “Eddie, you are depressed. You don’t want to do anything now, do you?” I had not realized I was depressed, but when she said that, I realized I was. She said, “When you go back to New York, look at the trees, and see how beautiful they are.” Then she told me there was no cancer in the prostate, and she was right.
When I got home, I did as Dora recommended and looked at the beautiful trees. The next Wednesday, when I came into the NYTS, Dora looked at me and said, “Oh, Eddie, you look so much better.” Of course I did not look any better physically. Dora had seen the improvement in my emotional field. I responded, “Of course I do, Dora. I did what you said.”
Dora had a great sense of humor, and as I also have a good sense of humor, we had many laughs together. Dora’s laughter was a cackle. Occasionally, she would laugh at something that none of us got, but her cackle soon had everyone laughing. Although her sense of humor was great, her feelings of compassion for all who suffered were even greater. Dora was not sentimental. She could work with anyone in pain, do what she could for them, and never fall into pity. She knew that pity would not help, and worse, that it would drag her down to a point at which she could not help anyone.
One amusing incident that showed her clairvoyant ability happened one night at a members’ meeting. We had an extremely difficult member who made it clear that she, and she alone, “understood Theosophy.” After a member spoke, she would often say, “You said, but Theosophy clearly teaches . . .” One night, when the annoying member was being particularly difficult, Dora was in the library on the floor above the meeting room. Just when we were all quite irritated at the difficult member, Dora appeared in the room, and she calmed everything down. Later, I asked Dora why she appeared when we needed her most. She said, “Well, I was sitting in the library, and all this prickly stuff kept coming up through the floor. I thought, is that a Theosophical meeting going on down there?”
Dora had an enormous vocabulary, but her strength was not in words. Often she would not complete a sentence, and just as often would use the wrong words. Yet she was able to impress the minds of most with her meaning.
Meditation was an important part of Dora’s life, and she helped many to learn how to meditate. I learned from her, and am eternally gratefully that I did. Dora conducted a meditation class just before member meetings. She was able to stimulate something deep within students that awakened them to the meditative experience.
Once, just before meditation, Dora made a pejorative remark about the Liberal Catholic Church, in which I am a priest. No sooner did we begin to meditate than I got the strongest impression of her saying, “Don’t worry about it. That was just my personality,” and it was.
While Dora was not a member of the LCC, she knew the value of the church, and she could see its services clairvoyantly. Once our bishop asked Dora to observe a mass said in the evening to see why C.W. Leadbeater, one of the church’s founders, said it should only be said between midnight and noon, as the church did until about 1955. She did, and she reported that angels appeared and participated, that the elements were consecrated, but when the Host was broken after consecration, the energy did not spread out over the neighborhood to bless the people. Rather, it was grounded through those present. The energy was lost.
As the title of her biography, A Most Unusual Life, suggests, Dora did indeed have a most unusual life. I vetted her biography and wrote an endorsement for it. To learn more about my dear friend Dora, I highly recommend that you read A Most Unusual Life: Dora van Gelder Kunz, Clairvoyant, Theosophist, Healerby Kirsten Van Gelder and Frank Chesley (Quest, 2015).
Ed Abdill joined the Theosophical Society in 1959. He has served as president of the New York Theosophical Society, and he served on the national Theosophical Society in America board, both as a director and as vice president. He has lectured for the Society throughout the United States and internationally. Ed has authored two books, The Secret Gateway: Modern Theosophy and the Ancient Wisdom Tradition and Masters of Wisdom: The Mahatmas, Their Letters, and the Path.