« Historically, in many languages and cultures, the spiritual was conceived as wind and breath, that which moves, the force mysteriously and invisibly animates : the Latin spiritus, anima, and animus, the Greek psyche, the Sanskrit atman, the Hebrew ruach. The spiritual comprehends but cannot be contained by intellect, cognition, or institutional structure ; it reaches out for unity and the ordering of experience ; it abhors fixity in the interest of transformation. Both the notion of ordering experience and that of transformation suggest something deeply existential, directed to connection with ultimate meanings, values, and ethical commitment. … spirit is the fundamental life-force giving drive and direction to human existence. Without it there would be no such thing as the human. »

Wade Clark Roof ; Spiritual Marketplace : Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion ; Princeton University Press 1999, p. 34