Dying to Be Me: A Book Review

What Anita Moorjani’s Memoir Teaches Us About Fear, Healing, and the Energy of Unconditional Love

“I had the choice to return... and I chose to come back because I had a purpose — to live fearlessly.”

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In a publishing world filled with personal memoirs, near-death experiences, and spiritual transformation stories, Anita Moorjani’s Dying to Be Me stands apart. It is not merely a story of miraculous healing, but a deeply transformative spiritual guide that rewrites our understanding of illness, fear, identity, and love. It is the kind of book that causes a subtle, irreversible shift in how we view ourselves and our purpose on Earth.

Moorjani’s journey begins in Hong Kong, where she was born into a traditional Indian Hindu family. From the very start, she found herself caught between cultures, expectations, and belief systems. Her upbringing instilled in her a powerful fear of displeasing others and a chronic anxiety about illness, especially cancer. These fears followed her for decades and ultimately manifested into reality when she was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2002. Over the next four years, her health steadily declined despite every attempt at treatment. By 2006, she was in a coma, her body riddled with tumors, and her organs beginning to shut down. Doctors gave her mere hours to live.

But that wasn’t the end. It was the beginning.

In her comatose state, Moorjani experienced what she calls a near-death experience (NDE), though the word hardly captures the scope of what she describes. She became aware of a realm of pure consciousness, where time, space, and physical limitations melted away. She could see her family and doctors gathered around her hospital bed, even hear their conversations, though her body was nonresponsive. She was also reunited with her deceased father and best friend, who helped guide her through this spiritual experience.

In that space, she was flooded with a sense of profound, unconditional love. Not love as a concept or emotion, but as the fundamental fabric of existence. She understood for the first time that her true nature was not separate, flawed, or broken. She was part of an infinite whole, radiant and magnificent. The fear that had shaped her life evaporated. She knew she could choose to return to her body or continue into the afterlife. Choosing to come back, she awoke within hours and, over the next several weeks, made a full recovery that left her doctors stunned. The cancer was gone. The medical records documented what her heart already knew: she had been transformed.

It is this experience that forms the heart of Dying to Be Me, and what Moorjani unpacks in the pages that follow is both intimate and universal. She does not focus solely on the mystical details of her NDE—though they are remarkable—but instead devotes much of the book to exploring what it means for how we live here and now.

One of the most revolutionary messages of the book is her claim that self-love is the most powerful healing force in the universe. Moorjani does not mean self-love in a superficial, affirmations-and-bubble-baths kind of way. She means radical self-acceptance. She describes how much of her life was governed by the need to fit in, to do what others expected, and to live in fear of disappointing family, society, and God. The more she denied herself, the more her energy contracted. She came to believe this energetic contraction was part of what allowed disease to take hold.

The return to health, then, was not just physical. It was spiritual. Her experience revealed to her that illness is not simply a biological breakdown, but often a reflection of deeper emotional and energetic imbalances. When we live in fear, guilt, or unworthiness, we weaken our life force. When we embrace our true nature and allow love to flow, healing becomes possible. This idea places Moorjani firmly within the tradition of New Thought spirituality, echoing the teachings of figures like Neville Goddard, Ernest Holmes, and Florence Scovel Shinn. Reality is not just out there. It flows from within.

Still, Moorjani is not dogmatic. She does not demand that others accept her experience or believe in miraculous healing. What she does insist on is that we begin to question the assumptions that limit us: the belief that we are small, broken, or subject to punishment; the idea that medical science can explain everything; and the notion that fear is somehow more realistic than love. These assumptions, she argues, have built a cultural paradigm where illness is treated without addressing its spiritual roots, and life is lived with a constant undercurrent of anxiety and self-doubt.

Her writing is clear, honest, and compassionate. She invites readers not to imitate her experience but to find their own truth, and to reconnect with the love they may have long forgotten. The book is filled with practical suggestions, personal anecdotes, and reflective questions. Yet at no point does she claim to have all the answers. Her tone is that of a fellow traveler, not a guru. This humility makes her message all the more powerful.

Of course, skeptics will find much to question. The medical records may confirm her diagnosis and recovery, but they cannot prove the spiritual dimensions of her experience. Critics may argue that her interpretation of events is personal and unprovable. Others might worry that her story encourages people to abandon traditional treatment paths in favor of faith-based healing. Moorjani is careful to emphasize that her message is not anti-medicine. Rather, it is about integration. Healing must occur on all levels: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

What makes Dying to Be Me so compelling is not just the story of Moorjani’s return from death. It’s the clarity with which she communicates what she learned and how she applies it to daily life. She reminds us that we are not here to earn our worth or prove ourselves to some external judge. We are here to express our truest selves. And in doing so, we contribute to the healing of the world.

There are echoes of other great spiritual memoirs here: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander, and Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. Like them, Moorjani’s book bridges science, spirituality, and personal transformation. But her voice is uniquely feminine, Eastern, and accessible. She speaks not from the pulpit but from the heart.

Her later books, including What If This Is Heaven? and Sensitive Is the New Strong, expand on the themes she introduces in Dying to Be Me. But it is this first work that feels the most essential. It is raw, revelatory, and luminous.

In a time when anxiety, chronic illness, and spiritual disconnection are on the rise, Dying to Be Me offers not just hope but a roadmap. It is not a book about dying. It is a book about waking up.

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Further Reading:

• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

• Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander

• Radical Remission by Dr. Kelly A. Turner

• You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay

• Sensitive Is the New Strong by Anita Moorjani

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Author's Note: If you've read this book or had a similar awakening moment, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. Let this space be one of compassion, curiosity, and conscious conversation.