12) Nijāruṇa-prabhāpūra-majjadbrahmāṇḍa-maṇḍalā
The entire cosmos is filled with the crimson glow coming from Herself.
Crimson is a mixture of red with a bluish tinge added, the colors of blood leaving the heart and getting back; it is the color of life ebb and flow and of love and passion. Having created the cosmos, Lalitā as the Universal Mother, peoples its [cosmos'] life, to be lived and enjoyed, not to be rejected and wasted. The color of the Universal Mother, the womb and the external reproductive organs is crimson red. In the morning rays of the sun, the very skies, the womb of wakefulness for the teeming life on earth takes on a crimson glow. The mother earth, terra cotta, has the brick red color. The flush of color on the cheeks of a youthful girl is a crimson glow. Śiva, who resides in every man as liṅga, the membrum virile, the erect phallus, is red in color when excited, he is then called Rudra, the red one or the angry one; he is the Universal Father. When the mother wants to become a mother or the father wants to become a father, the color of love engulfs them. Without love this world would not be. It is created by love, sustained by it and it evolves through love.
Love is an object for meditation, for worship. This healthy fact has been recognized in India since ages. The temples, which are places of worship, are sculpted with voluptuous figures of male and female forms in the most erotic, sensual and artistic forms to be meditated upon by those who come to pray. In the sanctum sanctorum there is the symbol of the erect phallus proudly jetting out of the vulva, the ever blissful union of the sexes shown as Śiva liṅga. The mode of worship is abhiṣeka, meaning lubricating the joyful coitus for ever more blissful feelings by adjusting the viscosity and structure of the lubricating fluid which is made by a proper mixture of milk, honey, ghee, curds and banana. This ceremony is watched and performed by millions; if they are knowledgeable they relate it to their own sexual center to derive bliss internally while performing the symbolic act externally; if they have had no background in the grand truths of religion, the symbols act subliminally on their psyche to clear the subconscious from the inhibition that sex is impious. That the union is to be personally enjoyed, seen and shown is the orgiastic message of the Śiva liṅga. The rock symbol implies that the erection, the hard on, must always remain so.
Source: Śrī Amṛtānandanātha Saraswatī "Sudhā Syandinī Bhāṣyaṃ" Typed Manuscript
(an incomplete commentary on Lalitā Sahasranāma)
