Hare Krishna Hare Krishna. At 5 a.m., the beginning of the day’s first worship service is announced with the ominous bellow of a conk shell (launch audio slide show in new window). When followers enter the sanctuary, they kneel down and press their foreheads to the ground in the direction of the bejeweled, static deities.

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare. Followers and chant sing the maha mantra and other Hindu mantras. Drums beat, the pace quickening from a drowsy yawn to a driving tempo. Arms stretch toward the ceiling, bodies swaying to the hypnotic beat of the drums, chanting and chanting and chanting. Some dance and twirl or jump and spin, all to please the deities.

Hare Rama Hare Rama. As the maha mantra grows louder, the priests wave plump fans in front of the deities. Elaborate likenesses of a multitude of gods and demigods, the most important being incarnations of Krishna, believed to be the supreme incarnation of God, are treated as if they were the gods themselves — which means that each one is carefully bathed, its clothes are changed daily, and it is offered three specially prepared meals every day. Special food is cooked for the deities, who are served during worship. (After the service, the offering is added to the communal meal.)

Rama Rama Hare Hare. During large festivals hundreds of people, nearly all of them pilgrims and day-trippers, join in. The crowd surges back and forth from the altar, shoeless feet scurrying across the smooth floor. Followers dance together in spinning circles. The chanters face the front altar, then a side altar, then a likeness of Prabhupada, back to the front altar, and so on, for up to several hours. But on a cold February day there are few visitors. High-energy chanting soon calms down into meditation. Followers use a string of plain white beads to count the mantras they’ve murmured to themselves. They pace around the sanctuary or sit in the lotus position and sway as they mumble the maha mantra and finger through beads. Later, one of the followers sits on a fat, low chair and preaches on the Bhagavad-Gita. “There used to be 700 people here. Now there are only a few. How can we go on?” he asks. “We have to be fit and ready. The snowball will keep growing and Krishna Consciousness will spread.”