Anita Moorjani - Dying to Be Me

review by Ro Bennett on show 5th April
This is an amazing, interesting book and I couldn’t put it down.
Anita Moorjani, an ethnic Sindhi woman from India was born in Singapore and then lived in Sri Lanka until she was 2 years old. Her family then moved to Hong Kong where she grew up speaking fluent Sindhi, Cantonese and English. She was educated in English schools in Hong Kong and later studied in England before returning to Hong Kong to take up a senior management position for a French fashion company where she traveled all over the world using her multi-cultural, multilingual background in a variety of business and social settings. In December 1995, she married her husband and soulmate, Danny.

In the book, Anita recounts how she was bought up in Hong Kong as part of a traditional Hindu family residing in a largely Chinese and British society. She tells stories of her childhood in Hong Kong, her challenge to establish her career and find true love. She describes the years of struggling to forge her own path while trying to meet everyone else's expectations and being pushed and pulled by cultural and religious customs since she had been a little girl.


She writes about the fears and anxieties which plagued her life, especially her dread of cancer; her anguish as she watched her best friend and young brother in law die of the disease and her terror when she herself was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in April 2002.


After nearly 4 years of battling the disease, she was taken to the intensive care unit of her local hospital in February 2006 where she was given less than 36 hours to live. After fighting the cancer for almost four years, her body-overwhelmed by the malignant cells spreading throughout her system-began shutting down Surrounded by loved ones and a medical team anticipating her last breath at any moment, Anita lay in a deep coma. However, as her organs failed, she entered into an extraordinary near-death experience.
Anita became aware of everything that was going on around her. She could not only hear, but she could see what was happening, but she felt no emotional attachment to the body which was undergoing all the medical procedures. She felt free and light, her breathing was no longer laboured, all her aches and pains and sorrow were gone. She was desperately trying to communicate to her stricken husband and mother that she was feeling fine, but she found she couldn’t talk.

She felt herself being drawn away from her surroundings, she could see her brother on a plane thousands of miles away anxiously trying to get to Hong Kong before she died. She felt herself expanding and filled with love and joy, awe and amazing clarity. Then she became aware of the presence or her father who had died ten years previously, and her friend Soni who had died three years ago. She describes this all in great detail in the book and it’s fascinating. She understood amongst other revelations that the cancer was not some punishment for something she had done wrong, or negative karma as a result of any of her actions as she had previously believed.

Eventually her father communicated to her, ‘This is as far as you can go sweetheart. If you go any further, you cannot turn back.’

She desperately wanted to stay in this wonderful realm. Then she saw her husband weeping inconsolably and her mum white as a sheet with disbelief, she thought of her distraught brother, and took the choice to return. She was aware of both her father and Soni communicating, ‘Now that you know the truth of who you really are, go back and live your life fearlessly.’

She also knew that when she returned to her body the cancer would be gone and she would make a full recovery. Including a chronological account of the progress of the illness, written by a doctor, she adds.:

My records confirmed that I had tumours the size of lemons throughout my body, from the base of my skull all around my my neck, armpits and chest, all the way down to my abdomen. But several days later there was at least a 70% reduction in their size. He (the doctor) is curious as to how it was possible for billions of cancer cells to leave my body so quickly when the organs were failing.


On March 9th 2006, five weeks after entering the hospital, Anita was released to go home. She was able to walk unaided, a week later she went to her favourite restaurant and ate a normal meal and on 26th March attended a friend’s wedding where she drank champagne and danced with no ill effects. Everyone was curious to know how she had recovered so quickly, but she just didn’t know how to explain it in words and was a bit concerned about how her experience would be received. She had a desire to talk about it mixed with trepidation about sharing her experience openly.

Then one day she had an e mail from her brother Anoop who had been searching the internet to see if anyone else had gone through anything similar. This led to Anita sharing her experience with the Near Death Experience Research Foundation. (NDERF) which in turn created enormous interest and commentary on an international scale.

Last year, Dr Wayne Dyer who is a well known author and radio presenter for Hay House publishing and broadcasting company was sent a copy of the interview with NDERF by a friend. On Anita’s birthday in March 2011 she was amazed to read a message from an editorial assistant at Hay House saying: Wayne Dyer became a huge fan of yours after reading about your NDE. If you are interested in writing a book about your experience, Hay House would be interested in working with you and developing and publishing it.

I read about the interview with NDERF on Facebook, so I looked up their site and read it. It was so interesting I went onto Anita’s website and listened to the radio interviews and went on to buy the book.

In the book Anita describes the NDE in detail and the effect it has subsequently had on her attitude to life and death. However she reiterates that this is her experience, relative to her - she is happy to share it but she is not doing so with the ulterior motive of trying to coerce others. She writes: If you are looking for step by step instructions or a set of tenets to follow, then I’m the wrong person for you, because I don’t believe in any ‘one size fits all’ dogma. It would only limit who you are.

My intention is to share with you all the emotional and psychological triggers that I believe contributed to my getting cancer, in the hope that in identifying these factors you can reduce or even eliminate your chances of getting sick in the first place.
At the same time, if you or someone you know has cancer or any other serious illness, please know that there are many paths to healing. I would only suggest that you follow what feels right for you and resonates with you personally.

I found it an intriguing account with an inspirational message of hope, an excellent read.