In each society and culture, the basic needs of human beings are same. However, as the interests and tendencies of each culture vary, each gives more importance to one aspect of human life. Most probably it was Swami Vivekananda who said: "Each culture has, as it were, a basic idea to work out, a destiny to fulfill, a role to play in the world, and a contribution to make to the whole human civilization. A culture can flourish, only so long as it remains true to its original ideal. Until that ideal is destroyed a culture cannot die, nothing can kill it."

Each culture is viewed through the way it expresses itself. Its forms of expression are embedded in its religious practices, arts and literature, sciences, customs and sociopolitical systems. Cultures can be classified into three basic classes: spiritual, mental and material or physical. A culture whose main purpose is material progress, and which lives at a sensate plane only, is a material or physical culture. Where the highest goal of a people is mental or intellectual satisfaction, there exists a culture of intellect or the mind. Finally, the culture whose primary goal is spiritual attainment is a spiritual culture. A culture fitting into one of these categories might contain elements of the other two cultural types, but it may be judged easily by observing its predominant characteristic.

There are many cultures in the world. The distinct ones are Western, Hindu, Confucian, African and Middle Eastern. For lack of space here, we will discuss Western and Hindu culture only. Western culture has several strands. The first is the political and social ideas originating in the city-states of the ancient Greeks: their apprehension of the values of truth, beauty and faith in reason and intelligence. The second is the Roman dynamic spirit of formulation of administration and establishment of law and the scientific mind in search of truth. The third and final strand is the Christian ideas of the divinity of love and compassion and the brotherhood of mankind, as well as the Jewish values of righteousness and justice.

The Promethean spirit of human excellence was also a part of Hindu culture -- the Mahabharata itself is a testimony of it. Greece and Rome produced Socrates and Pythagoras, but these societies rejected them. Plato was also perceived as coming from a different world-view, while in reality he was trying to bring his people toward the concept of ’Man know thyself.’ People absorbed only his social views and did not understand his spiritual side.

This type of neglect rooted in a movement away from introspection slowed down the further upward movement of human spirit in the West. It created a vacuum and ultimately the Greek and Roman civilizations crumbled down under their own pressure. Then early Christianity came as a spiritual alternative, which soon put a bar on freedom of expression. Also, Christianity’s emphasis on belief, ’only path’ dogma and the inability to satisfy the rational mind stopped aspirations toward a search for the true ’inner universe.’ Christian theology took over spirituality and stopped all new experiments toward the inner science or the science of life. It inhibited the search for truth both outwardly and inwardly. It took many Galileos to sacrifice their lives for the search of truth, it took long time for science to overcome the loss of freedom. Once this freedom was returned after the Renaissance, people in the West put most of its energy into their search for truth in the external world. Therefore the West has become a field of actions toward the external world. This has become the West’s specialization and has produced the inventive geniuses. At the same time, the values of liberty, equity, democracy and the rule of law have flowered in the Western mind. The rejection of the theocratic states of old Europe and their oppression definitely strengthened these values. In last 100 years, Christianity has changed a lot and many of the sects within Christianity (e.g. Unitarian, Presbyterian) has reduced the burden of theology and dogma and focussed more on true spirituality of Christ.

Although the influences of Judeo-Christian religious ideas and Greco-Roman inspirations for higher human achievements are present in Western culture, still Western culture is predominantly material and the majority of its people live at a sensate plane. On the other hand, Hindu culture was spiritual throughout the ages, excepting periodic deviations because of foreign influence and a lack of inner strength, as occurs today. Hindus have seen the abode of the divine in everything, not confined in the temples alone, whereas Judeo-Christian tradition puts God in the church or temple only and Western materialist society abandons the spirit altogether by cutting off human potential at a sensate level, which tends to go outward only. Hindus would not kick something, a book (source of knowledge connected with divine Saraswati), money (source of wealth connected with divine Lakshmi) and even a tree, because the Divine is present in all things. Hindus would ask for forgiveness for stepping on earth, or for plucking a leaf from a plant. Western cultures, however, have encouraged people to exploit nature to an extent that continued existence becomes uncertain!

Any day, any time, a `survival of the fittest’ mentality combined with inventive power may turn out to be `survival of none.’ The stockpile of armaments held by various nations reminds us of the comments of both Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, that we are still living in the barbaric phase of our so-called civilization and that we are yet to be ’civilized’! This is the outcome of a material culture. Arnold Toynbe similarly said: "It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self-destruction of the human race."

Greco-Roman culture specialized in the subject of ’man in the society,’ or the external connections of human beings, whereas Hindus specialized in the ’human being in-depth,’ or the inner connections of human beings. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, former president of India, beautifully illustrates this when he said: "The ideal man of India is not the magnanimous man of Greece or the valiant knight of medieval Europe, but the free man of spirit, who has attained insight into the universal source by rigid discipline and practice of disinterested virtues, who has freed himself from the prejudices of his time and place. It is India’s pride that she has clung fast to this ideal and produced in every generation and in every part of the country, from the time of the Rishis of the Upanishads and Buddha to Ramakrishna and Gandhi, men who strove successfully to realize this ideal."