But consider the secular materialist view in comparison to the non-dual experience: Do we have a sense of individual free will within the non-dual experience? Is there still a sense of being a human individual? Is the non-dual experience helpfully describable as good, bad, or meaningful? Approached from this direction, perhaps secular materialism and the non-dual experience are less far apart. As a description of reality, secular materialism maybe does not do so badly. It is perhaps an honest attempt to transcend the ego by highlighting how small and insignificant it is on a cosmic scale. But it performs this badly, because what it omits is any relationship between reality and individual consciousness. The relationship is one of participation. In contrast, the non-dual experience is that direct participation.