Dwapara Yuga - Electric Meter Running Backwards

The most obvious symbol of being tied into a system of waste and poor architectural choices is the racing electric meter, especially in the newer parts of the US South, with homes with poor solar orientations, poor insulation, no shade trees and racing A/C units. Similarly good drinking water is just flushed away, or sprinkled on resource-guzzling lawns, gas and oil burned, to mention nothing of occupants polluted by outgassing VOCs from paints and glues thoughtlessly used in construction.

As Dwapara Yuga progresses, these issues come into clearer and clearer perspective. The first solar home, built in Colorado in 1943, was a long time in finding siblings, with the real stimulus coming in the oil crises of the 1970s and recent years.

It is standing joke in car dealerships that customers spend more time examining cup holders than looking at or understandings engines. Similarly and understandably, with the growing wealth of the United States from the 1950s onwards, homes are chosen beyond the usual formula of location, location, location by ever increasing size, numbers of bedrooms, bathrooms and large numbers of labor-saving amenities.

Just as the oil crises have brought modern diesel engines back into focus in Europe and hybrid electric-gas ones in America, more people are beginning to look at the systems behind homes and how they interact with the networks of expensive services from property taxes to electric, water, gas and oil, making home owners and renters poorer and a handful of energy network owners wealthy based on carefully cultivated mass ignorance.

The standing joke of politics is that everyone likes sausages but no one wants to see them being made. The author suggests that we may not all like sausages and should really care if unhealthy ingredients and processes are necessary in their production. As the sausage making system of waste and poor architecture becomes more and more visible, politicians are forced to act since their power lies in appearing to represent the public rather than their lobbyist and party sponsors (whose wealth comes from charges, fees and a vested interest in the status quo). The desire for power is true across the whole political spectrum, irrespective of the 'green' badge worn. Even in the 1970s and 80s, anti nuclear greens in Europe, for example, were simply sponsored by the KGB, cultivating a climate favorable to Russian gas pipelines that could be stopped at any moment, with no real concern for individuals, their real and financial health and even less the planet.

In homes, we need not all live in extreme earthships or domes reminiscent of science fiction movies but instead make better choices in combining simple systems, often just getting back to how pioneer homes were designed when choices were simpler:

• Size - is such a giant home with its burdens of maintenance, cleaning, heating, cooling and taxes really necessary? According to a recent WSJ article the size of luxury homes even is falling for the first time in decades.
• Lot - would more thoughtful orientation, shading, landscaping mean less watering and room for growing vegetables?
• Insulation - with a more thoughtful design and much higher degree of insulation in windows and frames, with windows arranged to meet local conditions, less electric, gas or oil is needed for heating and cooling
• Electricity - even a few solar panels can make a home net zero energy, without the hassles of batteries, benefitting from federal credits and charge backs to the utility and even the smallest rented apartment can cost less with CFC or Led bulbs and energy efficient appliances
• Water - for a few dollars, almost any WC can be made dual flush to save good drinking water. Simple collection of rainwater can go a long way, without going to the extremes of gray and black water recycling and wells that attract the interest of wary city engineers almost as much as solar generation!

The ultimate symbol of living more in tune with nature and reversing some of the malign network influences on individuals is the electric meter running backwards, as an individual home covers its own needs and gives back to the community, lessening the need for coal and nuclear plants and by extension wars around the world, grasping for ever remoter natural resources.

We need not concern ourselves with the fate of the Exxons and the Chevrons, with their armies of engineers, they will simply continue to move over from oil exploration to building better solar panels, cars and the like, in tune with Dwapara.

Yogananda believed that the greatest enemy of man is ignorance and selfishness—not wars nor variety of religions nor customs nor races nor colors nor creeds. If ignorance and selfishness were driven from the hearts of men and they were taught to cooperate for mutual good, regarding themselves as brothers born of the one Father God, then that would pave the way for a World Nation.