Karen Heller | Chicken Soup, on simmer in Voorhees

As further evidence that the New Age is no longer young, Mr. Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Canfield, shows up at a holistic learning conference in a blue suit, wingtips and tie.

He seems less the enlightenment guru and more the millionaire executive, though he is both. He calls himself "a plain-clothes consciousness commando." He looks like John McCain's brother.

Canfield's name is on 124 titles, which he says have sold 100 million copies in 47 languages. The books, such as Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, are a Reader's Digest of personal-fulfillment stories with cartoons. "Because of these books, there are 200 people who didn't commit suicide," he says.

He's the self-anointed "America's success coach," the words Harvard and Lexus trill into his talk, and he has 64 principles to back it up. No. 17: "Ask! Ask! Ask!", which doesn't work as well with raises as he may think.

Canfield, 66, has been doing this 150 days a year for 20 years. It's like a perpetual campaign for self-awareness. He speaks effortlessly and easily, no notes, only a clicker to PowerPoint to purposefulness.

He came to New Jersey to help launch Transformations, Scott Rosen's dream of a holistic learning center like the 30-year-old Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y. "I want to re-create that feeling of a sanctuary," he says. Except instead of being at a bucolic camp in the Catskills, Transformations is situated in a Voorhees office park.

"I've been a holistic seeker all my life," Rosen says, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and sandals. "I've always been on an introspective path on ways to grow intra-personally." Offering courses in meditation, body work, holistic health and "living juicy," Transformations (readytotransform.com) offers a battalion of "world class professional coaches," recommending at least six sessions at $125 an hour to start.

The thing about the New Age is you're either there or elsewhere. Canfield and his acolytes talk about the Secret and names like Byron Katie (a woman, as it turns out), the Hicks (Esther and Jerry), Cheri Huber (and her brilliant title, There Is Nothing Wrong With You).

It's like so much Esperanto to those still dwelling in the Old Age.

The various philosophies espouse change, growth and happy times, often without wading back into all that unfortunate yucky Freudian family-history business. It appears you can excise Mommy out of the whole personal growth equation. Instead of couches, Kleenex and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, there are coaches, yoga mats and a lot of zither.

Canfield, who charms when he speaks publicly, is brusque and businesslike in person. He has little time for Rosen, who invited him to the event, and doesn't learn the center's name, repeatedly calling it Transitions.

Asked how Chicken Soup has changed his soul, as well as his life, Canfield doesn't hesitate. "The most obvious difference is monetarily," he says, a gold watch on one wrist, a gold bracelet on the other, his home and aforementioned Lexus located in the cashmere comfort of Santa Barbara. "Our business is worth $68 million. It's given me access to congressmen, senators, people you want to reach. I sleep well knowing that I made a difference in many people's lives."

"[Now] I'm focusing my energy to make a global impact. Clean water, literacy, land mines, child abuse. I want to have a more social impact using my influence and money. A group of people like myself - we all know each other - are working to create a transformation leadership council to do this."

What he describes is a United Nations of New Age seekers, becoming a Bono of Chicken Soupdom, trying to make the world feel better one uplifting story at a time.