Temples have domes so that the resonance of one’s prayers can rebound on one. The dome is just a small, semicircular prototype of the sky. It has the same shape as the sky touching the earth on all four sides. Whatever prayers are conducted under its canopy, the words do not get lost as they would under the vast sky. The dome throws back the chants at the devotee. The rounder the dome, the easier it is for the sound to travel back, and its echo increases in the same proportion.
What is the reason for this. The purpose is that when anyone chants Om, and it is done very intensely, the dome of the temple makes the sound resonate, forming a circle of echoing sound. The temple dome by the nature of its design, helps in the formation of a circle by echoing the sound Such a sound is a blissful experience. If Om was chanted under a wide-open sky, there would be no sound circle and one would not experience this bliss of the reverberating sound of Om in a temple.
I have heard a devotee chanting Om in the Meenakshi Madurai temple. It is his Sewa and he belts it out. When one is in the temple, the sound of Om encompasses one and one feels like one is enveloped in the Hiranyagarbha, the embryo of the universe.
Extracted from ‘Hidden Mysteries’ by Osho.
Aim Hrim Klim