Short answers, pulled from the story.
Spirituality has no single, widely agreed-upon definition. A survey of reviews by McCarroll found twenty-seven explicit definitions with little agreement among them. In modern times it generally refers to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension and the deepest values and meanings by which people live, often separate from organized religious institutions.
The word derives from the Latin spiritus, meaning soul, ghost, courage, vigor, and breath, which is related to spirare, to breathe. In the Vulgate, spiritus translated the Greek pneuma and the Hebrew ruach. Words translatable as spirituality first began to arise in the 5th century and entered common use toward the end of the Middle Ages.
In a Biblical context spirituality meant being animated by God. In the 11th century it shifted to denote the mental aspect of life against the material and sensual. By the 13th century it gained social and psychological meanings, marking both the territory of the clergy and the inner life of motives and affections.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who lived from 1803 to 1882, pioneered spirituality as a distinct field through Transcendentalism. The Theosophical Society, Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, and Aldous Huxley's perennial philosophy were major influences. Swami Vivekananda carried Neo-Vedanta and universalism from India to the West.
Spiritual but not religious describes people who seek spiritual experience outside organized religion, emphasizing finding one's own individual path. The distinction grew common in the late 20th century with rising secularism and the New Age movement. According to one 2005 poll, about 24 percent of the United States population identifies this way.
Studies report a positive correlation between spirituality and mental well-being, but whether the link is causal remains contentious. Masters and Spielmans found no discernible health effects from distant intercessory prayer, and a study by Herbert Benson found intercessory prayer had no effect on recovery from cardiac arrest.
Hinduism traditionally identifies three marga: Jnana, the way of knowledge; Bhakti, the way of devotion; and Karma yoga, the way of selfless action. In the 19th century Vivekananda added Raja yoga, the way of contemplation and meditation, as a fourth way, calling all of them yoga.