The song was Harrison's only composition on "Sgt. Pepper", although his endorsement of Indian culture was further reflected in the inclusion of yogis such as Paramahansa Yogananda among the crowd depicted on the album cover. With the worldwide success of the album, "Within You Without You" presented Indian classical music to a new audience in the West and contributed to the genre's peak in international popularity. It also influenced the philosophical direction of many of Harrison's peers during an era of utopian idealism marked by the Summer of Love. The song has traditionally received a varied response from music critics, some of whom find it lacklustre and pretentious, while others admire its musical authenticity and consider the message to be the most meaningful on "Sgt. Pepper". Writing for "Rolling Stone", David Fricke described the track as being "at once beautiful and severe, a magnetic sermon about materialism and communal responsibility in the middle of a record devoted to gentle Technicolor anarchy".