Excerpt from "Dying to be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing"

The following excerpt is taken from the book Dying to be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing, by Anita Moorjani. It is published by Hay House (Available Mar. 1, 2012) and available at all bookstores or online at: www.hayhouse.com.

Prologue

The Day I “Died”

Oh my God, I feel incredible! I’m so free and light! How come I’m not feeling any more pain in my body? Where has it all gone? Hey, why does it seem like my surroundings are moving away from me? But I’m not scared! Why am I not scared? Where has my fear gone? Oh wow, I can’t find the fear anymore!

These were some of my thoughts as I was being rushed to the hospital. The world around me started to appear surreal and dreamlike, and I could feel myself slip farther and farther away from consciousness and into a coma. My organs were beginning to shut down as I succumbed to the cancer that had ravaged—no, devoured—my body for the past four years.

It was February 2, 2006, a day that will be etched in my memory forever as the day I “died.”

Although in a coma, I was acutely aware of everything that was happening around me, including the sense of urgency and emotional frenzy of my family as they rushed me to the hospital. When we arrived, the moment the oncologist saw me, her face filled with shock.

“Your wife’s heart may still be beating,” she told my husband, Danny, “but, she’s not really in there. It’s too late to save her.”

Who is the doctor talking about? I wondered. I’ve never felt better in my life! And why do Mum and Danny look so frightened and worried? Mum, please don’t cry. What’s wrong? Are you crying because of me? Don’t cry! I’m fine, really, dear Mama, I am!

I thought I was speaking those words aloud, but nothing came out. I had no voice.

I wanted to hug my mother, comfort her and tell her that I was fine, and I couldn’t comprehend why I was unable to do so. Why was my physical body not cooperating? Why was I just lying there, lifeless and limp, when all I wanted to do was to hug my beloved husband and mother, assuring them that I was fine and no longer in pain?

Look, Danny—I can move around without my wheelchair. This feels so amazing! And I’m not connected to the oxygen tank anymore. Oh wow, my breathing is no longer labored, and my skin lesions are gone! They’re no longer weeping and painful. After four agonizing years, I’m finally healed!

I was in a state of pure joy and jubilation. Finally, I was free from the pain caused by the cancer that had ravaged my body. I wanted them to be happy for me. Why weren’t they happy that my struggle was finally over, that their struggle was over? Why weren’t they sharing my jubilation? Couldn’t they see the joy I was feeling?

“Please, there must be something you can do,” Danny and my mother pleaded with the doctor.

“It’s only a matter of hours for her,” the oncologist argued. “Why didn’t your other doctors send her to us earlier? Her organs are already shutting down, and that’s why she has slipped into a coma. She won’t even make it through the night. You’re asking for the impossible. Whatever we administer at this stage could prove too toxic and fatal for her body, as her organs aren’t even functioning!”

“Well, maybe,” Danny insisted, “but I’m not giving up on her!”

My husband held my limp hand tightly as I lay there, and I was aware of the combination of anguish and helplessness in his voice. I wanted more than anything to relieve him of his suffering. I wanted him to know how wonderful I was feeling, but I felt helpless in trying to convey it.

Don’t listen to the doctor, Danny; please don’t listen to her! Why is she saying that? I’m still here, and I’m fine. Better than fine—in fact, I feel great!

I couldn’t understand why, but I experienced what everyone was going through—both my family members as well as the doctor. I could actually feel their fear, anxiety, helplessness, and despair. It was as though their emotions were mine. It was as though I became them.

I’m feeling your pain, darling—I can feel all your emotions. Please don’t cry for me, and tell Mum not to cry for me, either. Please tell her!

But as soon as I started to get emotionally attached to the drama taking place around me, I also felt myself being simultaneously pulled away, as though there were a bigger picture, a grander plan that was unfolding. I could feel my attachment to the scene receding as I began to realize that everything was perfect and going according to plan in the greater tapestry.

It was then that the realization truly set in that I was actually dying.

Ohh . . . I’m dying! Is this what it feels like? It’s nothing like I ever imagined. I feel so beautifully peaceful and calm . . . and I feel healed at last!

I then understood that even if my physical body stopped, everything is still perfect in the greater tapestry of life, for we never truly die.

I was still acutely aware of every detail unfolding before me as I observed the medical team wheeling my near-lifeless body to the intensive care unit. They were surrounding me in an emotional frenzy, hooking me up to machines while poking and prodding with needles and tubes.

I felt no attachment to my limp body as it lay there on the hospital bed. It didn’t feel as though it were mine. It looked far too small and insignificant to house what I was experiencing. I felt free, liberated, and magnificent! Every pain, ache, sadness, and sorrow was gone. I was completely unencumbered, and I couldn’t recall feeling this way before—not ever.

I then had a sense of being encompassed by something that I can only describe as pure, unconditional love, but even the word love doesn’t do it justice. It was the deepest kind of caring, and I’d never experienced it before. It was beyond any physical form of affection that we can imagine, and it was unconditional—this was mine, regardless of what I’d ever done. I didn’t have to do anything or behave a certain way to deserve it. This love was for me, no matter what!

I felt completely bathed and renewed in this energy, and it made me feel as though I belonged, as though I’d finally arrived after all those years of struggle, pain, anxiety, and fear.

I had finally come home.

Foreword

By

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

I have been deeply and profoundly touched by the contents of this book, and even more so by my personal relationship with Anita Moorjani, who came into my life through a series of Divinely orchestrated coincidences. For more than four years, an advancing cancer brought Anita to death’s doorstep and beyond—inside the house of death itself, way beyond the doorway and the entrance hall, if you will. Anita has described it all in great detail in this soul-searching book. I encourage you to read it very carefully and thoughtfully with a mind that’s open to having many of your cherished beliefs challenged, especially about what lies beyond this world, in what’s often called the hereafter.

Surrounded by loved ones and a medical team anticipating her last breath at any moment, Anita lay in a deep coma. Yet she was given the opportunity to return to her cancer-ravaged body, defying all odds, and experience incredible healing—through the vehicle of unconditional love. More than this, she was allowed to return from the chamber of death and report to all of us what life on the other side of this corporeal world looks like—and of even more significance, feels like.

This is a love story—a big, unconditional love story that will give you a renewed sense of who you truly are, why you’re here, and how you can transcend any fear and self-rejection that defines your life. Anita speaks with uncommon candor about her cancer, explaining why she believes she had to go down this treacherous road in her life, why she feels she was healed, and why she returned. And make no mistake about it, her life’s mission is in a very big way reflected in the fact that you’re about to read her report of this experience . . . and that I’m so involved in helping to get this crucial message out to the world.

What Anita discovered during her 24-hour coma when she passed through the doorway into the other realm is remarkably aligned with all that I’ve been receiving in inspired moments of writing and speaking. It’s clear to both of us that Divine intervention took over and moved the pieces around in such a way that this woman living on the other side of the world, in a culture quite dissimilar from my own, was escorted into my awareness and my physical life.

I first heard of Anita when I received a copy of her near-death experience (NDE) interview from a woman in New York named Mira Kelley, who later became a friend and did a past-life regression on me (which is published in my book Wishes Fulfilled.) After one reading of Anita’s NDE report, I felt irresistibly called to do all that I could within my limited power to get her compelling message out to the world. I called Reid Tracy, the president of Hay House, and urged him to find Anita Moorjani and ask her to write a book detailing her experience in-depth. I added that I would be pleased—no, honored—to write the Foreword to her book if she was willing to move ahead with it. Through a series of wonderful synchronicities—including Anita calling from Hong Kong into my weekly radio show on hayhouseradio.com, and my interviewing her for the entire planet to hear—we connected on both a professional and a personal level.

Anita spoke of the sense that we’re all pure love. We’re not only connected to everyone else and to God, but at a deeper level, we all are God. We’ve allowed our fears and ego to edge God out of our lives, which has much to do with all of the disease not only in our bodies, but in our world as well. She spoke of learning to treasure our magnificence and live as beings of light and love, and of the healing properties inherent in such a mind-set.

Anita described actually experiencing the absence of time and space, and feeling for the first time the wonder of knowing that oneness isn’t an intellectual concept, but that truly everything is happening at once. She recounted being bathed in an aura of pure, blissful love, and how such a feeling has unlimited potential for healing. She learned firsthand the true meaning of the words of Jesus, that “with God all things are possible”—and that leaves nothing out, including healing the past. Anita discovered in person what I’d been writing about so extensively in Wishes Fulfilled: that in the true presence of the God-realized, the laws of the material (including the medical) world do not apply.

I had to meet this woman. Beginning with our phone conversations, I started to feel directly the spiritual essence of Anita and her message of hope as a replacement for fear. I invited her to not only write this book, but also to appear with me on PBS and tell her story of love, hope, and healing to the entire world.

I sent Anita’s NDE interview to my mother, who’s 95 years old and resides in an assisted-living center. My mom sees death quite frequently, since many of her new friends of advanced age simply pass away in their sleep and are gone from her experience forever. I’ve had many conversations with her about her thoughts on the great mystery called death that’s the destiny of all living things. All that materializes dematerializes. We know this intellectually, yet what awaits us is still the great mystery.

After reading Anita’s NDE report, my mother said that a wave of peace overtook her and replaced the fear, anxiety, and stress of what the great unknown brings. In fact, everyone who read of Anita’s near-death experience, including my children, felt that they had a new lease on life and vowed to me to always, above all else, love themselves, to treasure their magnificence, and to banish all potential disease-producing thoughts from their daily lives. While I’d been writing about these ideas, Anita had brought it all home in the world of experience.

Anita was able to heal her body and told me on many occasions that she felt she came back to teach this simple but powerful lesson, which could not only heal you, but transform our world as well. And this, I know, is why God brought Anita and me together. I’ve always felt that it was my dharma to teach people about their own divinity and know that the highest place within them is God. We are not these bodies; we’re neither our accomplishments nor our possessions—we are all one with the Source of all being, which is God. While I was writing all of this in Wishes Fulfilled, Anita Moorjani came into my life as if to place an exclamation point on all that I was receiving in my automatic writing. She lived it and said it so beautifully—and now you’re blessed to be able to read and apply all that Anita came to know in her furious bout with advanced cancer, and her tranquil journey back through the direct experience of Divine healing.

I’m honored to play a small role in bringing this hopeful message of love as the ultimate healing. May you take Anita’s words and become an instrument of removing any and all disease from your body, your relationships, your country, and our world. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning once observed poetically: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God.” Indeed, healing and heaven on Earth are yours for the loving.

Enjoy Anita’s wonderful, wonderful book. I love it, and I love her.

— Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Maui, Hawaii