Quest Magazine

VOLUME 110, NUMBER 1

CONTENTS

Up from Rock Bottom: The TSA Prison Program
David Bruce

A Discovery of Home
Aaron Krocker

A Life Lived in Prison
Chadwick Wallace

Franz Hartmann: A Pioneer of the Theosophical Movement
Susanne Hoepfl-Wellenhofer

Blavatsky, Christian Theosophy, and Russian Orthodoxy
David William Parry

The Ancient Wisdom in Africa
P.G. Bowen

From the Editor's Desk
Richard Smoley

Viewpoint: Unifying the Rainbow
Barbara Hebert

Members' Forum: The Crisis Was the Catalyst
Tim Wyatt

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.

Printed in the  Fall 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Hebert, Barbara, "From the Editor’s Desk" Quest 108:4, pg 8-9

Barbara Hebert
National President

Some individuals may see the theme of this issue and think it is about the great teachers, the holy ones whom many believe stand behind the Theosophical Society and its formation. Many of us perceive that at least two of these beings, the Mahatma Morya and the Mahatma Koot Hoomi, are responsible for bringing the Theosophical Society into being, with the aid of H.P. Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, and others.

Those of us who believe that these great ones established the Theosophical Society are forever grateful. Personally, I have no doubt that they continue to stand behind this organization as its members share the Ageless Wisdom in countless ways.

There are other ways of thinking and talking about teachers, however, and the articles in this issue, including this Viewpoint, share some of these ways.

The word teach is typically defined as causing another to know something. A teacher, then, is someone or something that causes another to know. Closely associated, of course, is the definition of learn, which is typically defined as gaining knowledge or awareness. However, when we look at the etymology of the word learn, it takes on a deeper meaning, especially for those of us who are attempting to walk the spiritual path. From the website etymonline (https://www.etymonline.com/word/learn), we read that the word comes from the following: 

Old English leornian “to get knowledge, be cultivated; study, read, think about,” from Proto-Germanic *lisnojanan (cognates: Old Frisian lernia, Middle Dutch leeren, Dutch leren, Old High German lernen, German lernen “to learn,” Gothic lais “I know”), with a base sense of “to follow or find the track,” from PIE root *lois- “furrow, track.” It is related to German Gleis “track,” and to Old English læst “sole of the foot.”

Læst, by the way, survives in modern English as last: the word for the model of the foot on which shoes are shaped.

Therefore, if we look to its origin, we find that the word learn stems from a sense of walking to find or follow the path, using the soles of our feet.

This is exactly what we are doing: walking to find or follow the path. Our learning is based upon following the path, one step at a time. If our purpose on this physical plane of existence is to become fully human through learning and growing, through the expansion of our consciousness, then, if we are open to it, everything and everyone is our teacher, and we can learn from everything and everyone. We learn so that we may find or follow the track to become fully human, to move forward in our spiritual evolutionary process.

A teacher is anyone or anything that helps us to know or become aware of something, especially about finding and following a path that has been chosen. If one has chosen to become a welder, the path may be knowledge of the process of welding. The same is true for someone who has chosen a path to become an accountant and has gained knowledge of accounting.

Many of us, in addition to our mundane career paths, have chosen a spiritual path. We focus on increasing our knowledge and awareness about spirituality and spiritual evolution for all beings. 

How many people do you know who go through their lives rarely learning from the circumstances that surround them and from the people with whom they come into contact? Often these individuals look externally for solutions to problems and difficulties. They blame the world, their jobs, their families, or any number of other things for what is wrong in their lives. Sadly, these individuals don’t even seem to realize that there is a track to find, much less follow.

This track is the spiritual path, and it compels us to learn. Once we become aware of it, we can never lose that awareness. We may ignore it or pretend that it is unimportant, but the knowledge never leaves us. Once we know that there is a spiritual path to follow, we can’t unknow it. At some point on our journey, whether in this lifetime or a future one, it manifests as “divine discontent.” It will niggle at our consciousness until we finally pay attention to it.

I’m reminded of the fairy tale about the princess and the pea. Written by Hans Christian Andersen, it is a Danish fairy tale about a prince who wanted to marry a princess. It was important that she be a “real” princess, and he had great difficulty determining who could qualify.

Then, one dark stormy night, a young woman came to the town gate and knocked on it. Wet and bedraggled, she insisted she was a princess. The queen, questioning whether this was true, set about creating a test to determine if the girl was truly a princess by heaping twenty mattresses and twenty pillows upon a bed. Under these, the queen placed one raw pea. The young woman slept on this bed and in the morning was questioned about her night’s sleep. She reported that she hadn’t slept at all and that she was bruised from something hard that had been in her bed.

The young woman’s words proved that she was indeed a real princess to the satisfaction of the queen and the prince. They believed that only a real princess could be so sensitive and delicate. So the prince and princess were married and lived happily ever after, and the pea was kept in a special cabinet.

While there are many morals to this story, the one that jumps out at me is that regardless of how many soft things were placed between the princess and the pea, she knew there was something there—something deep within that she could not ignore. She was unable to sleep, remaining awake through the night.

We are all aware of the idea that many people are asleep to the reality of the spiritual self, believing that the temporary physical self is the only reality. Andersen’s fairy tale points out that we cannot remain asleep when there is something deep within that pushes us toward awakening.

Everything and everyone we encounter gives us the opportunity of learning, of following the path we have chosen. As we go about our daily lives, we encounter people and situations that can be our teachers if we open ourselves to this possibility. The “pea” may take the form of a difficult family member or coworker or long lines in the grocery store. As we respond or react to them, we can use the opportunity to learn more about ourselves, to increase our self-awareness. The more we learn about ourselves, the more likely we are to move forward on the spiritual path. 

We can ask ourselves questions such as: Why am I so frustrated with this long line? What is going on inside of me? What is it about this person that pushes my buttons? What is this button, and how can I get rid of it?

Self-observation and self-awareness are key to walking the spiritual path. Difficult though they are, especially when they have to do with being honest with ourselves, they are an essential component of becoming fully human. Lifetimes upon lifetimes, it requires vigilance and determination to remain open to any situation or individual that can help us learn more about ourselves.

I firmly believe there are great teachers “out there,” who may inspire and motivate us to continue walking this difficult path. Yet the most important teachers seem to be the ones that are placed in our lives every single day: the situations and fellow human beings who provide us with the learning that is essential on our spiritual journey. May we have gratitude for all that teaches us and propels us on our way.

Printed in the  Fall 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor’s Desk" Quest 108:4, pg 2

From the Editor’s Desk

Many people claim to have spiritual teachers whom they barely knew and who barely knew them. The teacher might have thousands, even tens of thousands of disciples, so it has always been hard to understand how any one of them (outside the innermost circle) can claim that individual as any kind of preceptor.

It’s not my business to say who is whose teacher, or under what circumstances that name applies. But I would find it difficult to go to a weekend workshop—even, say, a Tibetan Buddhist empowerment—and claim the instructor was my teacher afterward. Even if one has attended many such workshops by the same person.

This observation forms the core of this issue. Three articles—by Lucy Oliver, Joscelyn Godwin, and the Members’ Forum by Ed Abdill—show another aspect of the spiritual teacher in our time: an individual, who may or may not be in any known lineage, who attracts a few dozen students with whom he or she works on a long-term basis. To me, this setup has far more potential for promoting long-term development than practically any other in this age.

The teachers in question were not gurus as such: they did not demand devotion and, in the case of Lucy Oliver’s Glyn, whom I knew myself, actively repudiated it. (For my portrait of Glyn, see “From the Editor's Desk Spring 2015,” Quest, spring 2015.) Nevertheless, they conveyed a certain knowledge and power that enabled their students to advance in a way that very few spiritual programs have.

In a Theosophical context, as Ed Abdill points out, Dora Kunz, the late president of the TSA, fulfilled this role for many, and her pupils that I know seem to think that no one since has managed to replace her.

We are talking about living human teachers here, and there may be many other kinds. Certain people say that they have had instructions from masters on the inner planes. This certainly seems possible, even likely, to me, but it is very difficult to claim any kind of authority on that basis. If you have any such experiences, I would imagine that the most prudent approach would simply be to keep your mouth shut about them. Nothing is easier than to sound crazy by prattling on about your contacts on the inner planes.

True masters, in my experience, make no such claims, even about themselves. I have been told, and I believe, one thing about masterhood, adeptship, and so on: if you claim to be it, you’re not it. Running around talking about yourself as a Master (with a capital M, of course) is itself a disqualification.

Hence genuine teachers are extremely evasive, not only about claiming such titles, but even allowing them to be applied. Even the Dalai Lama has said more than once that he is just “a simple monk.”

This presents a dilemma for the would-be student. How do you know who is genuine and who isn’t? Many of the highest teachers make themselves difficult to recognize, even affecting gruff or slovenly behavior in order to put off those who can’t see past appearances.

But then that is the first initiation. You have to have enough discernment to see past appearances—of any sort. On the flip side, demonstrating what used to be disingenuously called “crazy wisdom,” is hardly a reliable sign either.

A peculiar verse in the Gospels reads, “And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22). There is an obvious meaning here: the difference between genuine spiritual authority, as shown by Christ, and the mere chapter-and-verse knowledge of the scribes.

But there is another, more oblique lesson to be learned from this verse. The people had to have something in themselves that could distinguish genuine authority from pettifogging.

Unfortunately, there is no ultimately reliable touchstone. Even a sincere, ethical individual may really have nothing more inside than platitudes. Consequently, you have no guarantee that you will not be fooled. I would go further and say, if you can be fooled, you will be.

These are the risks we all run. You can never really tell the depth of another’s integrity. You can only maintain your own.

This puts me in mind of a peculiar theory of mine, which I cannot claim to be anything more than speculation. After their downfall at the hands of church and king, the medieval Knights Templar were accused of secretly worshipping a god called Baphomet. Historians have not known what to make of this claim. The Templars, the guardians of Christendom, worshipping some grotesque unknown god? Was it just slander cooked up by the priests?

Here is my suggestion. The Templars did have a god called Baphomet, which they used in their initiations. It was a ridiculous joke god invented for the purpose of the ritual. At one point the candidate was given the ultimate test: he was told that the secret of the Templars was they worshipped Baphomet. To become fully initiated into the order, the candidate was given the choice: he had to renounce Christ and worship Baphomet. But this was merely a test. If the candidate yielded and bowed down before Baphomet, he failed. If he refused to reject Christ, even on the threat of death, he passed.

You never know in advance what form the test is going to take.

Richard Smoley