"... the word 'spirituality' is today employed to describe everything from New Age practices and therapies to overcome addictions (such as Twelve Step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous) to forms of oriental meditation, prayer groups, and retreats in the desert. Books on spirituality appear regularly from Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The word is used is so many ways that there has sprung up a whole literature attempting to define what the term means. The root from which the word "spirituality" springs is the Latin noun spiritus which means, as is evident, 'spirit.' In that sense, at least, we can say that spirituality signifies something connected with spirit, as opposed to--what? The body? The earthly? The material?

"When the founding editors of the multi-volumed encyclopedia of world spirituality attempted to define spirituality, they knew that they had to provide a wide enough description to do justice to the widely divergent forms of religions they hoped to survey. The editors settled on this description: '... that inner dimension of the person called by certain traditions "the spirit." This spiritual core is the deepest center of the person. It is here that the person experiences ultimate reality....'

"... 'spirituality' refers to that dimension or dimensions of human experience which provide the spiritual aspect of our lives by enriching and giving 'thickness' to our ordinary experience."