The Lotus Temple, located in New Delhi, India, is a Bahá’à House of Worship completed in 1986. Notable for its flowerlike shape, it serves as the Mother Temple of the Indian subcontinent and has become a prominent attraction in the city. The Lotus Temple has won numerous architectural awards and been featured in hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles.
Like all other Bahá’à Houses of Worship, the Lotus Temple is open to all regardless of religion, or any other distinction, as emphasized in Bahá’à texts. The Bahá’à laws emphasize that the spirit of the House of Worship be that it is a gathering place where people of all religions may worship God without denominational restrictions. The Bahá’à laws also stipulate that only the holy scriptures of the Bahá’à Faith and other religions can be read or chanted inside in any language; while readings and prayers can be set to music by choirs, no musical instruments can be played inside. Furthermore no sermons can be delivered, and there can be no ritualistic ceremonies practiced.
In the construction of the Temple of the Lotus 800 people attended. Upon completion of construction, he became one of the most popular and recognizable landmarks of India. Unusual is that inside the church at all devoid of religious artifacts and paintings. Instead, he has a deep sense of exactly how the structure of the ideal and symbolic lotus flower. Lotus Temple in the ancient tradition of the new support of Indian culture: the structure is symbolic charged philosophical meaning. Mimics the lotus temple as if the message is to everyone who sees it – it was hard to choose a more suitable form for the modern church than pure divine lotus flower.
Clean the lotus silently adjusts the high way, removes any controversy.
Ideas of this flower in the Eastern peoples are rooted in antiquity, when the earth was not yet churches and religions. Flower, who grew up in the swamp, represented the spiritual path of person who can go through all the hardships of life. If he is sent to withstand the trials and did not give in vice, such a soul was considered cleaner.
The sole purpose of human life was considered a return of the soul to where it came into the dirty world of vices. He personifies the swamp. Lotus Flower is the improvement of the soul, understanding the ultimate meaning of human life. On this and say Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism.
Since its inauguration to public worship in December 1986, the Bahá’à House of Worship in Delhi has, as of late 2002, attracted more than 50 million visitors, making it one of the most visited buildings in the world. Its numbers of visitors during those years surpassed those of the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal. On Hindu holy days, it has drawn as many as 150,000 people; it welcomes four million visitors each year (about 13,000 every day or 9 every minute).
This House of Worship is generally referred to as the “Lotus Temple”. In India, during the Hindu festival Durga Puja, several times a replica of the Lotus Temple has been made as a pandal, a temporary structure set up to venerate the goddess Durga. In Sikkim a permanent replica is of the Hindu Legship Mandir, dedicated to Shiva