Also, spiritual experiences can be related to a larger reality like a holistic connects with the nature or the cosmos or divinity as a source of inspiration or orientation in life. In a way, spiritualism is philosophising life for pricipled living for self-realisation.

According to Robert C Fuller, "Spirituality exists wherever we struggle with the issues of how our lives fit into the greater scheme of things. This is true when our questions never give way to specific answers or give rise to specific practices such as prayer or meditation. We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a meaning or power beyond our visible world."

Thus, a precept or practice is spiritual when it leads to knowing oneself for a deeper meaning of one's existence and ultimate purpose of life.

The lived experiences of both men and women have been different over the ages and so has been their spiritual growth. But, the patriachal way of family life, competition, materialism, commerencialisation of knowledge has led to male dominance in all sheres of life and externalisation.

Since sprituality is matter of inner self and men getting more external, there are differences in the spritual levels of the two genders. A research done during training in self-development also reveales the gender difference in spiritual levels of the two sexes.

Here is the abstract of the action research by this investigator.

"Researches in neuroscience, psychology and femininity point out that right hemisphere of a women’s brain is more active than that of men. An experiential activity during a self-development workshop for teacher educators (N=24; M: 15, F: 9) amply proved that women’s psyche is more inward bound. The participants were given the experience of observing their breathing for two minutes with their eyes closed.

After this, they were asked to analyze their experiences regarding what happened to their consciousness during those two minutes. Analysis of their responses showed that differences in men’s and women’s psychic experiences were significant (p= .05; DF= 1; chi square analysis) with women being more inward looking.