On the wide, barren ground, where not even a blade of grass grew, she appeared—alone and upright—like a dry stalk suddenly emerging in the desert. Relying only on one and a half toes of her subtle foot, she began her austerities, her awareness serving as the sole support for her delicate stance. With the tip of her foot, she blocked the narrowness of the earth’s dust, struggling to remain upright, raising her foot with great effort. Binding her foot amid the tightness of dust, sand, and pebbles, she endured the darkness, the discipline of nonviolence, sharpness, and a round mouth, subsisting only on air. In the forest, she followed a restless snake, which, poised at the tip of its tail, had risen to gaze far and swayed with ceaseless motion. From the snake’s mouth, a sunbeam emerged, slender as a needle, and became her companion, guarding only her rear. Even in small things that become one’s own, affection arises; so too did the sun’s ray, acting as a friend, grow attached to its needle-like companion. Her second companion was a hermit woman, clear and pure, but by association, she herself became tainted, just as a needle is stained by what it touches. Her face, wrinkled with a smile as the sun’s rays shone from the needle’s tip, was later seen to smile only because of the dust there. Even when she was glimpsed through the dust, trees, creepers, and others never tired of longing to behold that ascetic needle. The winds disturbed her, who stood firm with steady steps and a pure disposition, by their noisy utterances. They filled her mouth, declaring, “We will be born, we will exist, and soon we will be swallowed by her—these pollen grains of flowers.” Yet, though the dust was driven by winds sent by the lord of ascetics, she did not swallow it, even when it seemed to enter her mouth. Her resolve was unshakable; even light things could not prevail against her inner strength. She did not take in even the pollen that came to her mouth. The wind was astonished—more than at the uprooting of Mount Meru—for even when she was covered with mud and inundated by great waters, she remained unmoved. Strong winds shook her, flashes of lightning frightened her, clouds tossed her, and thunderclouds roared, but for a thousand years she remained steadfast, unmoved like a stone slab, absorbed in meditation. When her outward movements ceased and time had passed, she began to contemplate her own true nature and consciousness. The light of knowledge arose within her, revealing all that is high and low; she became pure, a needle of consciousness, supremely purified. She became aware of what is to be known through her own intellect; when her misdeeds were exhausted by austerity, the needle pointed to her own essence. Thus, for thousands of years, she performed severe austerity, facing the seven great worlds, causing intense heat. The fierceness of her austerity set the mountain Himavat ablaze like the fire at the end of an age, and the world itself seemed to burn. Indra, seeing the world overwhelmed by such penance, asked Narada whose austerity was causing this, and Narada replied: “For seven thousand years, Sūcī, the long-enduring ascetic, has been known to me; because of her, this world is ablaze. Serpents hiss, mountains split, celestial beings fall, clouds and oceans depart; the directions, along with the sun, become parched and sullied. O Indra, see how austerity, through illusion, brings about destruction.” Having heard the entire account of Karkati and the bitter events, Indra, his curiosity renewed, questioned Narada again: “O sage, by means of austerity, Karkati attained the state of the needle-demon; who were the beings she consumed in the womb of the Himalayas?” Narada replied: The vital needle, having become a demoness, entered the tender body of a parrot; her own support was an iron needle, black in color. Abandoning that support, she, riding the chariot of air and space, entered the body through the path of the vital wind. Within all the channels, tendons, nerves, fat, and blood, she, with impure limbs, hid herself like a bird within crevices. Wherever the wind did not move in a particular channel, she entered there and established sharp pain, like the fierce root of a banyan tree. Through that body and its senses, as well as many others, she consumed human flesh and other suitable foods. Asleep, she stirred slightly, her garland askew, a young maiden with tender cheeks pressed against her lover’s chest. She wandered free from sorrow, like a bird along forest paths, among rows of clouds of flowers rising from wish-fulfilling trees, doubled in splendor. She drank the fragrant nectar of pollen from the mandara blossoms in the forests of the celestial mountains, hidden among swarms of bees. She chewed on corpses’ limbs, like an aged vulture proud of its strength, or like a sword-staff in battle, devouring the bodies of heroes with speed. In all the channels and sheaths of the body, like the wind’s trace in every direction, she rose and fell, like a crow along the pathways of the sky. Within the cosmic Self, the breaths vibrate in the sky, carried by the wind’s current; in the same way, she vibrates in every bodily dwelling. She wanders in the bodies of all living beings, distorted by the power of consciousness, like a housewife illuminating her own home with the light of a lamp. She moves within the blood, like the power of fluid in water; in the oceans, like the motion of whirlpools; and in the belly, she writhes and turns.