Tribute to Wally Burnstein

“Don’t pussyfoot around: tell the truth; name names; call a poisoner a poisoner and a murderer a murderer; and demand what you really want, an end to the poisoning. Then pick the right corporate target and stop at nothing until you win”. Dr. Wally Burnstein D.O.

Dr. Wally Burnstein passed away on April 11, 1996. He’s been gone for 18 years but the profound affect he had on the people around him will last their entire lifetime. He was a courageous and fearless warrior, a yogi who spoke for those who could not speak, but also spoke for those who would not speak. He was my mentor and friend and as I watch the destruction of our Mother Earth I am often reminded by what he would say. The following is an unedited transcription of Wally ranting about the destruction of our species due to corporate technology. I hope it will motivate you to make a difference in your community and ultimately the world around you.

“Nothing is more important than staying alive and being healthy. But if we support technology that destroys nature, the destruction of nature leads to our destruction, all species, but particularly our destruction. If everybody has cancer, if children are developing cancer at the age of 5 and 10 years old than what’s the sense, there’s no sense to anything. Nothing takes precedence over us staying healthy and us staying alive, of keeping the earth alive, keeping the Mother alive. Of all the issue’s that people are working on, the most important issue is to show that by doing like they’re doing, corporate science and corporate technology, they’re destroying nature and therefore, destroying our health.

And we’re destroying our future generations, our gonadal tissue, our DNA, so all future generations have birth defects, everybody’s born with birth defects, so what’s the sense, nothing else is more important, nothing takes precedence. So what we have to work on, all of us together, is to show where corporations, corporate science is destroying our very life, our ability to live, they’re destroying our Mother, they’re destroying our support system, our major support system and therefore, there will be no life, so why are we doing anything else. Cancer is a preventable disease, but it is not a curable disease necessarily, but it is a preventable disease. And in order to cure cancer you have to prevent it, in order to prevent it you have to stop the technology and science as we know it today.

We’re talking about destroying our future while we’re still alive. So essentially, the vertically ill, you see there is a difference between the horizontally ill and the vertically ill, the horizontally ill are in bed, you know they’re sick, you walk into a hospital and they’re lying in bed, the vertically ill are walking around, we are walking around and we’re sick, we’re as sick as the people lying in bed because our genes are destroyed, our DNA is destroyed, our future is destroyed, we’re walking around with chronic illnesses. So the truth is we are the vertically ill as well as the horizontally ill.

We are sick while we’re walking around, we are absolutely the most frail, fragile species the earth has ever seen. And we’re not talking about, even though it’s very important, we’re not talking about the dinosaurs, we’re talking about our species. And one time we say, don’t do this because your going to wipe out other species, you can’t live if you wipe out other species, well we’ve gotten way beyond that, we’re not just wiping out all the other species we live with, we’re wiping out our species. And there’s nothing left, there’s nothing left, nothing for the future. There’s nothing good that can come out of this. So there’s no other issue. Jobs? Are you kidding?

The first thing we have to deal with is the health, but therefore, the first thing we have to deal with is nature, is living within nature’s bounds, living with nature. If we don’t do that there’s no way we can remain, and it’s happening, it happened. There’s no way we can remain a viable species, culture, people, whatever. We have to live within nature. We must stop the technology that destroys nature. That technology makes us comfortable, without that technology we can’t make it, so that technology is seductive, technology is addictive, and that technology is pathological, causes total pathology. We have become autistic to what is going on around us. The destruction of the species, the increased cancer rate, we see no evil, we hear no evil, we’ve become totally autistic to the horror that is going on around us. The major thing in our lives is denial. We get up in the morning, we take care of our needs and our families needs, we either go to work or do what we do, as though there’s nothing happening.

What’s happening is, the world, the environment, the Mother, our Mother is being murdered. Our Mother’s being murdered every single day. Our Mother’s being murdered, we have a cancer rate of one out of three, we have a breast cancer rate of one out of eight, we have a child cancer rate that the major child disease is cancer, we have loss of species every day, we have the green house effect, we have the ozone layer, we have polluted water, all the water in New Jersey, probably in the United States, is contaminated, almost all of it, 99% of it. The air is contaminated, the food is contaminated, the sickness is rampant, and we still go about our business like there’s a future. We’re in total, total denial. What we have to do is wake up and say, NO. We have to change, we can’t do this anymore. We must just say that we will not co-operate anymore. But we’re in total denial and it’s amazing. And we’re also totally addicted. Because only addicted people can keep this up. We’re in a constant state of war. We’re in a constant state of war, but the war is against ourselves, against our Mother, against the very source of our life, of our livelihood.”

4 responses to “Tribute to Wally Burnstein

  1. I really enjoyed reading all of your entries. What a wonderful inspiration and glimpse into the practice of yoga. It’s really true that the mind informs the body and vice-versa. I like the way you incorporate your musings into a dialogue about the living yoga, which is really our daily life.

  2. I am just wondering if you are ever going to do the follow piece you mentioned towards the end of last year, “so you think your’re spiritual, eh?” I took your classes when you were doing them at Centenary College and at your studio nearby and while I have giotten awy from youg for years now I am ready to trully find it and all I have to offer it, now.

  3. A great man, a great soul. Exxon feared him. He was one of the few who cared that the indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico were being to uranium poisoning from mining done by the U.S. government on Native American lands that were supposed to be left alone. Wally knew what was going on on so many levels. His truth frightened the big guys. Their threats could not stop him. One of the founder of “Food and Water.” One of my greatest heroes.

    Love you Dr, Wally. Thanks for everything.!

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