Crystal Clear : New Age Center Decides It Must Rechannel Energy to the Mainstream

Deep in the heart of Orange County sits an old church visited regularly by a peasant who has been dead since the 12th Century.

His name is Kavar, and, speaking in a strained staccato voice through the efforts of an experienced channeler, he has for years offered advice, predictions and witticisms to anyone willing to listen.

The same building is home to a monthly support group for people claiming to have been abducted by UFOs. And nearly every Saturday the place is overrun by psychics, channelers and healers of various stripes intent on offering their talents to the public.

“There aren’t many places like this,” said Jim Miller, 58, of Tustin, one of the estimated 200 people who attend programs and classes here each week. “It provides the opportunity for personal growth.”

Said Bobbi Blake, 53, of West Covina, “You can’t find this anyplace else.”

That isn’t literally true, of course. Throughout Southern California and Orange County, a handful of New Age centers offer similar or related services.

Patrons of the former Psynetics Foundation, however, seem infected by a certain affinity for its environs. This is, after all, one of the oldest and largest New Age centers around. And while other institutions have updated and modernized, admirers say, this one has pretty much stuck with its original program.

Until now, that is--proving only one thing: that even in the halls of higher consciousness, sometimes the winds of change must blow.

Recently, the nonprofit organization made a bid for respectability by formally changing its name from psynetics, an obscure word meaning “science of mind and soul,” to the Learning Light Foundation. Too many people, directors said, confused the old name with “Dianetics,” L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology, which some consider a cult.

The change was formally announced this weekend at a huge psychic and holistic therapy fair organized on the theme of Camelot.

And from now on, directors say, in addition to such old standbys as astrology, palmistry and past-life regression therapy, the foundation will offer on-site courses for business people wishing to improve their intuitive decision-making powers, lectures by medical doctors on good health practices, and classes in meditation for children and teen-agers.

“We want to become more part of the mainstream,” said Susan Baucom, a certified public accountant with a master’s degree in business administration from USC who took over as the foundation’s full-time general manager five months ago. “We are trying to legitimize more.”

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Being part of the mainstream was about the last thing on the minds of the people who founded the organization in 1962. Walter Tipton was a Methodist minister disillusioned by what he perceived as the dogmatic thinking prevalent in organized religion. So he and his wife, Lola, placed an ad in a local newspaper looking for like-minded individuals.

More than 100 people responded, and the couple began having meetings for philosophical discussion at their home in Orange.

Caught up in the fervor of the 1960s counterculture and later in on the ground floor of the burgeoning human-potential movement, the group founded by the Tiptons swelled. In the late 1960s, it began meeting in a rented house. And in 1972 the foundation moved to its present location, a two-story, 11,000-square-foot former Church of the Nazarene on East Lincoln Avenue.

Almost from the beginning, the old Psynetics Foundation, which at the time was one of the few organizations of its kind anywhere, centered its program on a series of “power of the mind” courses developed by Tipton. In addition, the place soon became a mecca for psychic healers, mind readers, spiritualists and various cosmic consciousness aficionados of all kinds.

Ironically, the very thing that fueled the center’s success eventually contributed to a downward spiral. As psynetics teachers continued mining their specialties, the success of the human potential movement and expanding public interest spawned competitors. While others seemed to move with the times, the Anaheim foundation, though, settled into sameness, Baucom said.

“We got left behind,” Baucom now acknowledges. “We weren’t paying attention to what was happening in the world.”

Under its new banner, she said, the Learning Light Foundation still will offer numerology on Monday nights, taping of spirit voices on Tuesday nights and dowsing on a future Saturday.

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But it also will offer new goodies, such as teachers who will visit companies to help management “tune in” to their inner voices and make better decisions, and child day-care where the curriculum includes meditation.

A few Learning Light teachers have discovered ways to adapt some of the foundation’s traditional pursuits to more current sensibilities. A class in astrology recently devoted several hours analyzing the astrological chart of O.J. Simpson.

But some programs don’t easily adapt. For about a year now, the foundation has been hosting UFO-related events ranging from regular “UFO nights” featuring lectures and discussions to the recently formed UFO abductees’ support group.

That group’s first meeting was held in the foundation’s main auditorium a few Saturdays ago amid almost messianic fervor.

“There are a lot of abductees in Orange County wondering where to go,” explained Melinda Leslie, the Corona del Mar office assistant who formed the group with a hypnotherapist friend.

For the management of the Learning Light Foundation, however, such talk poses a dilemma. UFO programs attract big crowds, but the subject doesn’t exactly jibe with the foundation’s new bid for mainstream respectability. And although “we are open-minded,” Baucom says, “we (also) want to fit in.”

Over the next few months, she said, foundation managers will evaluate what to keep and what to sacrifice on the altar of progress. In the end, though, the group’s tradition of openness may prove a difficult tendency to buck.

“Ultimately it’s people looking for support,” Baucom said of the foundation’s fringe-like past and open future. “We’re about education; this is all part of life, and you can’t be embarrassed by that.”