A TALL, beautiful woman stands before you. With a spot of rouge upon her olive-skinned forehead, she wears a long, pink sari that swirls to her toes. A wreath of many-colored roses envelops her, and a deep-blue pheasant nestles at her feet. Too bad: the woman and her creature are merely a painting on a wall.

You stand with 100 people in a deep, narrow, gaily decorated but solemn sanctum. You are quite possibly much different from the rest-you may be a student, or a devotee-head shaven-clothed in a plain saffron robe, or an elderly but open-minded adventures, or, perhaps, a Texan in town for the first time, your hair cropped closely around the edges, with your string tie held closely in place with a silver Longhorn clasp.

Whoever you are, you will soon have a great deal in common with your company. You are to be your own entertainment, a spectacle unto yourself. And you have come with the same purpose as the rest. You are here to chant, and pray, to embrace the all-knowing the all-powerful, the all-attractive. You are here to attain Krishna.

It is said that Krishna is not immediately available to all men. It is said that Krishna hides himself, or itself, from most of his seekers and followers in order to make himself quintessentially desirable to them when they reach him in the end.

Krishna will not reveal himself to you in the next few minutes. He will not even become entirely apparent to his shaven devotees. They, who are to conduct the ceremony, can guide you in Krishna practice, but they cannot lead you to Krishna truth.

Those whose teachings lead to Krishna truth are, of course, rare in any age. The Vedic transcripts tell us that the emergence of any such man will result in a religious movement that sweeps the far corners of the earth.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded four years ago by the Indian Swami Bhaktivedanta. It now has active chapters in every major American city, and thousands of adherents throughout Western Europe and Japan. For these devotees, Bhaktivedanta possess Krishna knowledge. He is their spiritual master.

In any of his eternal forms, one devotees has written, Krishna is God. This must be understood. When he is playing as Child Krishna on the lap of his mother Yasoda, he is God; when he appears as the half-lion half-man form of Nrishingadeva, he is God; and as Baraha, in the form of a boar, he is the same transcendental Supreme Lord.

Krishna is a spiritual being. His nature transcends the physical, and, in eluding his followers, he disguises himself in a never-ending reincarnation of physical masquerades. Bhaktivedanta is the religiously and historically designated intermediary between Krishna and his mankind of followers. It is he who governs their physical and spiritual lives in the observance of divine being.

Mortals, too, are reincarnations, but their imperfect knowledge places the process of reincarnation beyond their conscious control. Still, it is folly to cultivate one's physical material attributes at the expense of his spiritual integrity, because, Bhaktivendanta maintains, it is not the material trappings of one's existence that transmigrate to another age and another existence, but rather the immortal spirit.

DEVOTEES live according to four basic rules. They do not gamble, drink, engage in "illicit" sex, or cat meat. They live communally in Krishna temples, and feed themselves on sweets and spices whose recipes are taken from Vedic texts. They do as little as possible to expend themselves in physical self-flattery.

After several minutes of preliminary chanting, the ceremony is about to begin. Drama is the force and substance of Krishna knowledge, and the practice of Krishna observance will be conveyed by skit.

"You must learn this Vedic chant," begins one devotee to a mock disciple, "and recite it three times a day. But you cannot speak it aloud. You must say it softly to yourself."

Enter a newsboy, a stray woman, and a drunk. The boy screams, "Extra! Extra! Read all about it-Riots! Floods in Mississippi! Russian dog bites American man; atomic war in the making!"

The disciples begin to chant, "Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, hare Krishna..."