Sam Harris dishonesty about Helena Blavatsky in “Waking Up”

Sam Harris mentions Helena P. Blavatsky in the first chapter of his book Waking Up: Guide on Spirituality without Religion (2014), opening its discussion of the East-West spiritual encounter with a dismissive portrait of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to the public to use as a punchline. It is rare for such an author to even mention Blavatsky, but it is unfortunate again, as always, that it is a slight, or sneer. Harris conflates Blavatsky’s original teachings with later innovations of Neo-Theosophy (primarily from C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant), and not knowing this, he was not able to educate his audience, and he still has not corrected this. A more accurate engagement with the sources would distinguish these layers rather than attributing false notions to Blavatsky herself.

Sam Harris states the following:

“Everything about Blavatsky seemed to defy earthly logic: She was an enormously fat woman who was said to have wandered alone and undetected for seven years in the mountains of Tibet. She was also thought to have survived shipwrecks, gunshot wounds, and sword fights. Even less persuasively, she claimed to be in psychic contact with members of the “Great White Brotherhood” of ascended masters—a collection of immortals responsible for the evolution and maintenance of the entire cosmos.

Their leader hailed from the planet Venus but lived in the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, which Blavatsky placed somewhere in the vicinity of the Gobi Desert. With the suspiciously bureaucratic name “the Lord of the World,” he supervised the work of other adepts, including the Buddha, Maitreya, Maha Chohan, and one Koot Hoomi, who appears to have had nothing better to do on behalf of the cosmos than to impart its secrets to Blavatsky.” (Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion, p. 24)

This is actually not Theosophy. The great majority of what was stated is a Neo-Theosophical innovation post-Blavatsky. Harris’s opening emphasis on Blavatsky’s weight is gratuitous and irrelevant to the validity of her ideas, a trope that appears in other unsympathetic biographies.

In reference to the legend of Shambhala, more historical and mythical context has been researched than Harris mockingly provides, as not proof of Shambhala, but correlation between what Tibetan Buddhists and Blavatsky taught about it.

Blavatsky referred to a network of adepts and initiates of different countries and nationalities who were living, flesh-and-blood human beings though of advanced spiritual and intellectual development and knowledge, not “ascended masters” or disembodied immortals. The concept of ascended masters has a very specific and distinctly traceable evolution beginning with Leadbeater, the Ballards, Bailey and others. The term “Great White Brotherhood” and the heavily mythologized, hierarchical “ascended masters” framework (with emphasis on clairvoyant revelations of astral planes, past lives, and initiations) belong to the later Neo-Theosophy of Leadbeater and Besant. Blavatsky and her correspondents, whoever they exactly were, rejected, repudiated, warned against and anticipated these distortions, even regretting their mission as having failed. Blavatsky expressed her deepest regret was introducing the adepts in the first place, and their names and other legendary characters that took on an immortalized role in pop-occulture were used to give legitimacy to a new angelology reflecting a quasi-Catholicism.

Blavatsky also did not describe a “Lord of the World” from Venus, nor present Sanat Kumara (a Hindu Puranic figure) as descending from Venus. Blavatsky’s mythological interpretation of these figures stays to main degree within the tradition’s interpretations, whereas the Venusian planetary-logos details or personalistic worship elements that later emerged belong to the Leadbeater and Besantian system.

There are problems in Sam Harris’s portrayal of Blavatsky and Theosophy that displayed a common pattern among researchers that display a laziness in scholarship.

FAT OCCULTIST BLAVATSKY: Like Harris, there was a pattern established, that mentions, or mocks Blavatsky’s weight. Why do researchers on Blavatsky repeatedly make a snide remark about her weight?

DOUBTS OF HER TRAVELS: Harris doubts her travels. Biographers like Sylvia Cranston have dealt with this in “H. P. B.: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky.” Harris only offers the skeptical position, with nothing but skepticism and no research and accounts to compare.

GREAT WHITE BROTHERHOOD OFTEN TIED TO WHITE PEOPLE: Firstly, she never called the school of her teachers in the Trans-Himalayas, the “Great White Brotherhood.” The term Great White Brotherhood evolved from the Rosy Cross legends of such secret chiefs or masters called the Fratres Lucis. The German Rosicrucians learned their doctrines from Islamic esotericism. Their teachings, namely the Cycles of Time feature in Mazdaism, Tibetan Buddhism and Islam, and are reintroduced once more to Western audiences by Modern Theosophy.

ASCENDED MASTERS: Ascended masters are fake. H.P.B. never mentioned anything about ascended masters. She criticized the idea of her copyists who were developing new ideas, she criticized as the “Solar Adepts.” She constructed the term “Pseudo-Theosophy” to expose these groups and individuals towards the end of her life emerging as a threat to the spread of true Theosophy. Her correspondents mock these ideas in their letters, saying at the end of their involvement with the Theosophists, that the Theosophists were deluded about who they really were — they were just mortal men. Take this case of one Turkish adept as an example describing his farming life in Early Muslim critique of Western Imperialism: A Turkish Effendi on Mammon, Christendom and Islam. Their roles shift from students to “teachers” naturally, when they begin expounding on their philosophy and instructing the two Englishmen, A.O. Hume and A.P. Sinnett. K.H., M. and the Chohan were flesh-and-bone men, and utterly repudiated being confused to be disembodied spooks.

XENU-ESQUE: There is no leader from the planet Venus. You are a liar, Sam Harris. Shambala is a mythical kingdom in Hindu and Buddhist tradition. Sam Harris persists with this “Lord of the World” from Venus. H.P. Blavatsky never mentions such an idea. This is Pseudo-Theosophy.

NO MESSIANIC EMPHASIS IN BLAVATSKY’S VIEW OF THEOSOPHY: By consequence, and by the choice of those teachers, she became their “agent.” View it in a secular manner. Blavatsky defended herself against those who blamed her for the mythologization of her masters. We advise the removal of the idea that this is something messianic.

Sam Harris cannot defend himself on air and podcasts about others misconstruing his words, but do the same, and want a pass. We find this issue across the internet.

Take a look at this forum in 2010 on Prison Planet.

1. Eugenics is a great thing to Theosophists. What?
2. The desire of the T.S. is to produce a new messiah or new age. No it is not. It was originally explicitly designed to expose such desires of groups. Unfortunately, some people after H.P.B.’s death had other plans. Alice Bailey makes this claim in her book, and people have quoted that, without even seeing if H.P.B. claimed such a thing. Bailey lied to buttress her claims.
3. Theosophists have a fascination with UFOs. Lies.
4. These people on this forum can’t even differentiate between Benjamin Créme, Alice Bailey, Hubbard and H.P. Blavatsky.
5. Venus (lucifer) is special to Theosophists.
   • Not true, and the Theosophists do not worship Venus.

All their source information is through secondary works, or adverse criticisms and cheap websites.

CONCLUSION

One can remain skeptical of occult claims, mediumship controversies (e.g., the SPR report), or the historical accuracy of the Theosophical Movement’s claim of the involvement of Mahatmas while still acknowledging the historical influence and intellectual seriousness of her core writings. Conflating her with later developments undermines intellectual honesty, and this seems to be abandoned by skeptics criticizing Occultism. Harris is not alone in this error, because many popular and academic critics repeat secondary or hostile sources that blur original Theosophy with its later Adyar-branch offshoots. This creates a strawman, and Blavatsky is made responsible for extravagant claims she did not originate, making it easier to dismiss her as a colorful fraud without grappling with her actual project

Harris’s larger point in Waking Up that contemplative insight and mindfulness can be decoupled from religious dogma is valuable. However, accurate historiography strengthens rather than weakens such arguments. Critics of Theosophy have legitimate points regarding Blavatsky’s methods, the unverifiable nature of her claims, and the movement’s later schisms and excesses. But attributing Leadbeater’s inventions to Blavatsky herself is a category error that serious scholarship continuing forward have to avoid. Better research that distinguishes the 1875-1891 period from post-1891 developments would produce a sharper, more credible critique, and this means that the first point of introduction to Theosophy through Rene Guenon should be challenged, because it engaged in this conflation.