Woman On Her Death Bed: "The Secret To Living A Life of Purpose & Meaning" | Anita Moorjani

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:00 You have an incredibly powerful story. You have been through a life experience that most of us never get the chance to go through, and that experience has taught you some really key lessons. Now, where I wanted to start this conversation, we will hear about that experience shortly, but one of the lessons that you have learned is that it's really important to live our life fearlessly.

Anita Moorjani 0:29 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:29 What does that mean?

Anita Moorjani 0:31 So to me, living fearlessly really means being fearlessly yourself, being yourself fearlessly. Because usually most people's biggest fears, it's not about the bungee jumping or the parachuting, it's about exposing who they are. It's about being authentic. Because we are a culture who are really afraid of being shamed. We're really afraid of not meeting other people's expectations, and people feeling disappointed in us. And we spend our lives trying to gain approval from everybody around us. That's what we do. We dance for the critics. We want everybody's approval. So living your life fearlessly means taking your own power back and living the life that you were meant to live for you, not because you're trying to please everyone around you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24 I mean, that's really powerful. I can't imagine there's anyone who just heard what you said and didn't on some level connect with that. I think that's how universal that message is, right? We do want to fit in. We do want other people to like us, but-

Anita Moorjani 1:45 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45 ... if we overly worry about that, it can come at a huge cost, can't it?

Anita Moorjani 1:51 Huge cost, and I paid the price for it. I really did. 'Cause I spent my entire life before getting cancer, um, trying to please other people and trying to win other people's approval.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04 Yeah.

Anita Moorjani 2:05 And, um, I couldn't do anything if anybody was disappointed in me, and it never occurred to me that what I thought mattered.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:18 In your TEDx talk-

Anita Moorjani 2:19 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:19 ... which I think was a few years ago now-

Anita Moorjani 2:21 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:21 ... it's still just as powerful, actually, as when you released it, you said that many of us are brought up in a culture of fear.

Anita Moorjani 2:32 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:34 What does that mean?

Anita Moorjani 2:35 It means that we are taught through fear instead of through love. So to me, fear and love are the two opposites, the polar opposites. And when I was in that near-death state, which of course we'll talk about later, I felt like I was, like, enveloped in this sea of love, and I understood for the first time what unconditional love meant, and I understood for the first time that I am loved, and I never knew that. I'd never felt it in my entire life. And it's ironic. I didn't feel it in my life, and I felt it in death. But here is where we need that. So when I came back into this realm, back into my body, it felt like I lived in two worlds. We all live in two worlds, but we don't realize it, and the two worlds are the world of love and the world of fear. And the world of fear is what we are being fed right now-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:41 Mm-hmm

Anita Moorjani 3:41 ... conditioned. It's like there is a fear of failing. For example, if you take every system we have, you take the medical system, it's more about the fear of illness than the promotion of health and wellbeing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:56 Mm.

Anita Moorjani 3:56 And if you take the education system, it's more about the fear of failing than it is about being passionate about-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:04 Yeah

Anita Moorjani 4:04 ... studying and work. And this is how we seem to operate across the board.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:10 Yeah, I love that. It really echoes so many of the things that I've been reflecting on over the past few years. And so a lot of my career has been about trying to help people change their behaviors-

Anita Moorjani 4:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:25 ... okay? For the better. What I realized a few years ago is that it's not necessarily the behavior that's the most important thing. It's the energy behind that behavior.

Anita Moorjani 4:38 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:39 Right? And I came to the conclusion a few years ago that everything we do in life either comes from a place of love or a place of fear.

Anita Moorjani 4:50 Uh-huh.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:50 So it's really interesting to hear you share your realization from your powerful life experience when you nearly died, but I've also realized, you know, we're having this conversation, new year is around the corner, and I think one of the reasons that most New Year's resolutions fail is because we don't feel good enough in who we are.

Anita Moorjani 5:11 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:12 So we try and shame ourselves. We try and, you know, guilt or not feeling good enough is the underlying energy behind our New Year's resolutions. But if it was love, that I am enough, I'm already enough, and so what can I do to actually enhance my life or live in harmony with that love, I think you're gonna get two very different outcomes.

Anita Moorjani 5:35 Absolutely. In fact, can I share something with you?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:38 Please.

Anita Moorjani 5:39 So before I was even diagnosed with cancer, um, I used to live a very healthy life. I still do, but there's a difference. So I watched two people close to me, the same age as me, get cancer, and I decided I was not going to be one of the statistics of people that get cancer. You know, you always hear now, like, one in three people are going to get cancer, so I decided I'm not going to be one of those people. So I started eating really healthy, only organic. I was, um, green juicing every morning. I was having fresh wheatgrass shots, and I was taking all the anti-cancer, antioxidant supplements. I was really, really diligent with eating all the right things, and guess what? I got diagnosed with cancer. And it was only when I, you know, uh, crossed over, when I had the near-death experience, did I understand that everything I was doing I was doing out of a fear of cancer, not from a place of love of myself and love of my body and love of my life. So today, I still am pretty, um, I'm pretty conscious of my lifestyle. I, I do choose my foods carefully, but I do treat myself sometimes too. But I do, I eat well, but it comes from a place of love. I love my body. I love my life. I love what I do, and I want to live really long so that I can keep doing it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:13 Yeah. As a doctor, hearing that is so interesting, this idea that you were doing everything you could from what you knew about trying to look after yourself. And I guess this is where my thought patterns have moved over the last few years is that, yes, those physical health behaviors are, of course, are important. What we eat, how much we move-

Anita Moorjani 7:41 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:41 ... how much we sleep. Yes, they are. But our thoughts, our beliefs, our emotions, our ability to be ourself-

Anita Moorjani 7:51 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:52 ... or not be ourself, I think there's pretty good evidence to say they are equally as important, if not arguably more important in some cases.

Anita Moorjani 8:03 Yes. I would almost say more important because that becomes the driving force behind the positive behavior towards your lifestyle. So it becomes instead of doing all the so-called good things out of fear or out of shame, it's all done with this feeling of passion and joy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:26 Yeah. Now, Anita, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you on my podcast is, firstly, I'm incredibly fascinated by what you went through, but secondly, I believe that the life lessons you learnt through that experience have a huge amount of value for all of us, right? It, it's kind of twofold.

Anita Moorjani 8:54 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:54 And so I think life lesson number one that you've gone through already is that it's important to live life fearlessly. I think we'll keep revisiting that throughout the conversation. But perhaps you could explain what is this powerful, like, life experience we keep talking about? Let's go through it.

Anita Moorjani 9:10 Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:11 You- you've, you've hinted already at, at some elements-

Anita Moorjani 9:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:14 ... that you were diagnosed with cancer.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:16 But perhaps the best way to do it might be can you paint a picture for me of your life before that diagnosis and then take the story forward from there in whichever way you'd like to?

Anita Moorjani 9:31 Okay. Thank you. So when I was diagnosed, I was 42.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:34 Okay.

Anita Moorjani 9:35 But if you go back before, so of course I was eating extremely healthy at that time because I was watching, um, one of my dearest friends go through cancer and my husband's brother-in-law. But prior to that, I've always grown up living a life, a very fear-based life, fear of disapproval. Um, I grew up... My, my parents are Indian, and I grew up with a lot of gender disparity. Um, and so in my culture at the time I was growing up in my community, of course, this is not all Indian people, but within my community, let's say men were treated differently from women. They, uh, they were offered different values. That impacted me quite a bit, and I used to rebel against that, but it really did make me feel that I was inferior just for being a woman.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:28 Wow.

Anita Moorjani 10:29 And so I didn't have a close relationship with my dad. I was very close to my mom. She was wonderful. It was always as though she was trying to make up for the lack of love I was getting from my dad. And basically, my dad treated me as though he was disappointed I was a girl, and the biggest thing he wanted for me was to get married, and he felt that, uh, for example, I wanted to have a higher education. I wanted to get a job. I wanted to have a career. I wanted to earn my own money-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:01 Mm-hmm

Anita Moorjani 11:01 ... so I could be independent. But my dad's beliefs were that I had to stay at home until I got married, and then I would be my husband's responsibility, and he didn't want me working or traveling or having a higher education, um, because it would be harder to get me married, according to him. And he felt that whether I work or not would be up to my husband, not up to me. So-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:29 Well, can I, can I just interject there? And-

Anita Moorjani 11:31 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:31 ... what sort of, if you don't mind sharing-

Anita Moorjani 11:33 Of course

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:34 ... where did you grow up, and what kind of time period are we talking here?

Anita Moorjani 11:37 Okay. So I grew up in Hong Kong.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:40 Okay.

Anita Moorjani 11:40 And this was late '70s into the '80s.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:43 Okay. Great.

Anita Moorjani 11:44 Um, so, uh, and I was immersed in British culture, British pop culture because I went to a British school where everybody-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:53 Right

Anita Moorjani 11:54 ... was British, but then I have Indian parents and, uh, my dad who wants me to be groomed for an arranged marriage. And so he's of course talking to friends about their sons, and I said I want to choose my own partner, my own husband. And you know, he didn't like that. He said, "Well, you're not marrying anyone outside the community." But I didn't, you know, relate to this way of thinking where your parents choose your spouse because that wasn't happening to any of my friends-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:26 Mm-hmm

Anita Moorjani 12:26 ... because they were mostly British friends. But, um, so growing up In, under those circumstances, I always felt I was a disappointment to my dad. I always felt I never got his approval, and I never felt he loved me-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:44 Wow

Anita Moorjani 12:44 ... just because I was a girl. So that set me up for a life of always trying to win people's approval, and I was someone who was quite shy. Um, n- and no way would I have imagined my life unfolding the way it did, you know, where today I'm like-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:05 Mm

Anita Moorjani 13:05 ... speaking at events. I would never have imagined me on stage or being a published author, any of that. I was somebody who was shy, um, and quite meek and timid. And, uh, anyway, I met a wonderful man, husband, my husband Danny, who's an amazing person. But I married him, met and married him after my father passed away. So my dad had passed, and I met Danny, who turned out to be Indian, 'cause I had told my parents I may or may not marry an Indian person. I'm just gonna marry someone I love. And, uh, so Danny's been an amazing husband, and after we got married, in fact, it was not long... We'd been married maybe six years, and I, my best friend had cancer. She got diagnosed, and it was very scary for me to see what she was going through. And so as I watched what she was going through, I kind of thought, "Wow, I never want that to happen to me." And I started to develop this incredible fear of cancer. And because of her, I started to research everything that causes cancer-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:18 Mm-hmm

Anita Moorjani 14:18 ... because I wanted to help her. I was there for her. I would go to the hospital with her. I would help her with her kids. And as I was researching and as I was seeing not just what the cancer was doing to her, but, you know, it looked to me like the treatments weren't helping her. She was deteriorating. And so I started to read up of- about everything natural that's anti-cancer, that heals cancer. And even though I wasn't sick, I started to follow all these n- um, natural diets, anti-cancer diets, and I was particularly hard on myself. It was as though I was trying to heal cancer in my own body. That's how strict I was. That's how scared I was about getting cancer.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:06 Because you could see your friend-

Anita Moorjani 15:08 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:08 ... with cancer.

Anita Moorjani 15:09 And she was deteriorating, and it was very scary and emotional for me to watch what she was going through and watch her family. And no matter what she did in terms of, um, mainstream Western modern medicine, she... Her family were taking her to have, like, the best treatments that money can buy in the best hospitals, and yet all I saw was that she was deteriorating.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:39 Mm-hmm.

Anita Moorjani 15:40 And that scared me. I thought, "Wow, there is no cure for this. There's no cure, so I never want to get this."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:46 So I better work even harder and do more things so I never get it.

Anita Moorjani 15:50 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:51 Yeah.

Anita Moorjani 15:51 Exactly. So I was driven by this-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:53 Yeah

Anita Moorjani 15:53 ... fear of cancer. And lo and behold, [laughs] I found an, a lump on my neck, like here, just between my collar bone and my shoulder, and there was a lump there, and it was a swollen lymph gland. And so at first, the doctor said, "I'll give you some, um, s- um, I'll give you some medication, some antibiotics, and let's see if your lymph, uh, y- your lymphatic system is just fighting off an infection. And if it doesn't subside, we'll have to do a biopsy." It didn't subside, so they did a biopsy, and they said it's, uh, the biopsy showed that it was h- uh, lymphoma. And then they said it's, yes, it's confirmed it's lymphoma, and then they did the scans, and they confirmed it at stage two because they said it has spread down to this quadrant. So apparently the stages tells you how far it's spread.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:53 Can I just ask you if you can remember... You've already said that you're someone who had a lot of fear in you. Seeing your friend with cancer probably ramped up that fear-

Anita Moorjani 17:07 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:07 ... even more. What was it like for you when you actually got that diagnosis? B- because it's, it's as if all your fears had suddenly been materialized, and in some ways that reinforces your idea that, yes, I was right to fear this thing because now I've got it.

Anita Moorjani 17:24 Yes. Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:24 So t- tell me about that a little bit, please.

Anita Moorjani 17:26 So that was a very interesting feeling because there was a, a huge amount of fear, but in a way there was also a tiny bit of relief, is that, okay, now I have nothing to dread coming up because I've already got it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:43 Mm-hmm.

Anita Moorjani 17:44 And so it was just the weirdest feeling.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:46 Wow.

Anita Moorjani 17:47 But the other thing that kicked in, which was also really strange, is that up until that point I had been there for my friend and her family. I'd literally stopped doing anything for myself. Everything I did was to prevent cancer and to help her get over hers and to heal hers or to manage her family. You know, I was... I literally put myself, um, I made myself available for them because I felt so awful about what she was going through. But also, for the first time, when I had my own diagnosis, I felt, "Oh, now I get to take care of myself. I can't worry about anyone else anymore."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:28 You said, "Now I get to take care of myself." Even that language is fascinating-

Anita Moorjani 18:32 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:32 ... isn't it?

Anita Moorjani 18:33 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:34 That it almost, well- Is it fair to say that the cancer gave you permission for the first time to look after yourself-

Anita Moorjani 18:43 Ah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:43 ... and put yourself first?

Anita Moorjani 18:44 Yes. That's very astute of you. That's exactly what it was. I was not able to do anything for myself unless there was a good reason to. I felt guilty, and so much of that was from the conditioning of trying to win my father's approval and doing everything I could to win his approval.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:08 Wow.

Anita Moorjani 19:09 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:10 So you've got cancer-

Anita Moorjani 19:12 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:12 ... and you're trying various things, um, but you keep getting worse, don't you? And-

Anita Moorjani 19:18 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:18 ... and talk us through that, that day. I think, was it 2006?

Anita Moorjani 19:24 Yes, on February the 2nd, 2006.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:27 Okay. So 18 years ago, this happened. Can you still remember it as vividly as when it happened?

Anita Moorjani 19:34 I can, and that's the thing. This memory will never, never leave me because it was so real and vivid.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:43 Okay, so let's go through that. So we- we're up to the point where we understand your life before that. You've been diagnosed with cancer despite your best efforts to not get it.

Anita Moorjani 19:52 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:53 I know you try a variety of things for a few years or a few months, but let's go to that actual time in the hospital when everything in your life started to change.

Anita Moorjani 20:03 Okay, yes. So at that point, at the... I w- I had reached the final stages of cancer. It had spread throughout my lymphatic system. So I had tumors by that point, um, many of them the size of golf balls, literally the size of golf balls, from the base of my skull, all around my neck, under my arms, in my chest, and all the way down to my abdomen. I mean, I still have the test results that lists where all the tumors are. And my lungs were filled with fluid. Like, I had to go, every three weeks I would have to go to the clinic to have my lungs emptied from the fluid-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:49 Wow

Anita Moorjani 20:49 ... because I would start to choke on my fluid. So I could never sleep well at night because if I would lie flat, I would choke on my own fluid, so I always had to be propped up. But my body had also stopped absorbing nutrition for a long time, and so my muscles were completely atrophied. They'd completely deteriorated. So I didn't even have the strength in my body to stand up or to walk. So I was in a wheelchair for mobility or in bed or sitting on a chair, but I didn't even have the strength in my neck to hold my head up. My, my head was always hanging down. And I weighed about 85 pounds, and I had these open skin lesions where toxins were weeping out of my skin, which at the clinic they had to keep cleaning up the wounds and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:41 Mm

Anita Moorjani 21:41 ... and bandaging them up. And so on February the 2nd, I went into a coma. I had been in so much pain and discomfort and fear. I feared everything. I feared the disease. I feared the treatment. I feared death. I feared everything at that point. And finally-- And I was fighting to stay alive. Finally, it felt like I just couldn't fight anymore. I just didn't have it in me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:10 Mm-hmm.

Anita Moorjani 22:10 And I went into a coma, and my family were there in the hospital, and they were all around me. And the doctors told my family that these are my final hours and that I won't even make it through the night. And they told my family that my kidneys had also already shut down. And all of this is also written in my medical records, even the fact that they told, they informed my family-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:37 Wow

Anita Moorjani 22:37 ... of my imminent death.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:39 That's there in your records?

Anita Moorjani 22:41 That's there in my records, yes. It's actually written there. Of course, no one thought I would ever access my records after. They thought I was... Yeah, I mean even the doctors, 'cause I had the right to go back and access all my records, and it's actually in there. And, um, but the thing is, as my family were around me and my body, my physical body lying on that hospital bed in a coma, 85-pound body with skin lesions and tumors and everything was lying there, w- unbeknownst to everyone around me, I actually started to feel myself leave my body, and I felt incredible. I felt light. I felt free, and all the pain was gone, and all the fear was gone for the first time in years. It just felt amazing. And, um, and see, I get emotional when I think about that time. And I felt like I was enveloped in this kind of ocean of love, like just this feeling of love that I've never felt in physical life before. And I wanted to communicate to my family who were around my body. So it was my d- uh, my brother, my husband Danny, and my mom. The three of them were around me, and I wanted to tell them that I'm fine, don't worry, because they were distraught. They were crying, and I wanted to tell them, "I'm fine. I'm better than fine. I'm going to be... I'm, I'm okay up here out of my body. I feel great." But I couldn't communicate with them because, of course, I had no vocal cords. I had no biology. And even the way that I was able to be aware of everything around me, it was like I had 360-degree awareness, and I... It was, I could see, hear, and feel everything that was happening. So when we look with our physical eyes, we have to kind of focus. We turn our head, and we look, and we have a limited, um, perception of, you know, there's a limited field of what we can see. But from this perspective, it was strange and interesting because- I could see, like, all around my physical body and beyond, and whatever I chose to put my focus on, I was there, even if it was outside the room. I, and on... In addition to that, I was able to actually feel the emotions of the people who were all around me. I could feel the emotions of my family, which was, you know, they were really distraught. Of the doctors who were around me, the nurses, um, and they were all very caring and really trying their best to give me what I needed. They were poking tubes into my arms, and I was connected to heart rate monitors. But I could feel their hopelessness because they knew I was going to die. There was even one doctor who actually just kept telling my family, "I'm so sorry, it's just too late. It's just too late. There's nothing we can do. We just have to wait."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:08 Can I ask you, Anita?

Anita Moorjani 26:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:09 You have told this story on many occasions since it happened.

Anita Moorjani 26:15 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:17 Why is it, do you think, there's such emotion coming out from you as you're telling it?

Anita Moorjani 26:26 Because I feel that I... It n- for me, the memory of it doesn't get old at all, because I feel so connected to that side when I tell it. So connected. That was so real. It was more real than this, and it's very easy... Like, one of the fine lines that I tread is that that was so real and so clear, everything that happened that I've yet to share-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:59 Mm

Anita Moorjani 26:59 ... with you, was so, um, revealing to me of who I am, why I'm here, what really matters. That I am, in a way, sometimes if I don't remember it, it's easy to get caught up in the trappings of this physical world.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:22 Mm.

Anita Moorjani 27:22 It's really easy to get caught up with, um, I've gotta sell my book and I've gotta get this many views, and it's very easy to get caught up in that because that's what this physical world is about. But when you die, you realize none of that is important. And every time I share the story, I'm reminded of it, and I'm so glad that I had this happen to me because it's taught me what is really important. And I, and I've made it my mission to share it because I don't want people to have to die to figure it out. I don't want them to have to go through what I did.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:58 There's plenty more to that story. It's so powerful. Even up until this point, especially given what your medical records said, and given the fact that you're here in front of me-

Anita Moorjani 28:10 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:10 ... in, in flesh and bones-

Anita Moorjani 28:11 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:12 ... uh, looking incredibly healthy. What you have been through is often referred to as an NDE, a near-death experience.

Anita Moorjani 28:22 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:24 Do you think that's a good term for it?

Anita Moorjani 28:26 Um, I think it's the best term that they could have come up. Like, I didn't even give it that term. I was kind of... It was suggested to me that, "I think what you've had is an NDE, is a near-death experience." And, um, I feel that, uh, it's... our language is so limiting.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:48 Mm.

Anita Moorjani 28:49 And if I could come up with a term that was more, that felt more fitting, I would love to.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:55 Yeah, that's interesting.

Anita Moorjani 28:56 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:56 Because it's, it's fascinating, this whole field of near-death experiences. There's so many books on it.

Anita Moorjani 29:03 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:04 There's so many documented cases. In fact, are you familiar with Dr. Bruce Grayson?

Anita Moorjani 29:08 Oh, yes. I know him personally.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:10 Do you?

Anita Moorjani 29:10 'Cause he's researched my case.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:12 Right.

Anita Moorjani 29:12 He's researched everything, my medical records, all of it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:15 Wow, because I heard a recent interview with him-

Anita Moorjani 29:17 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:17 ... and he's from the University of Virginia.

Anita Moorjani 29:19 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:19 I think it's over 50 years he's been looking at this.

Anita Moorjani 29:22 Yes. He's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:22 And I wrote down something he said, 'cause I wanted to put it to you. So this is a bona fide, medically trained psychiatrist. I think he's a tenured professor at the University of Virginia.

Anita Moorjani 29:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:34 Right? So he's got all the kind of the minerals and the credentials that people might want. I think he said he has documented w- over 1,000 NDEs, near-death experiences.

Anita Moorjani 29:47 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:47 I didn't know one of them was yours.

Anita Moorjani 29:48 One of them is mine.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:49 Okay, well, it just-

Anita Moorjani 29:49 I filled in millions of pages of his forms and questionnaires.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:52 Because I think he's very robust and he wants to get as much objective evidence as he can that this actually did happen.

Anita Moorjani 30:00 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:01 But this is what I wrote down from what he said. "I was taught in college and medical school that the mind is what the brain does, and all of our thoughts and feelings and perceptions are all created by the brain. But I cannot believe that anymore. I've seen people whose brains were either offline or severely impaired telling me they had the most elaborate experience they've ever had. So I'm now inclined to think that the mind is something else and the brain filters it." Now, that is really powerful coming from a Western medically trained doctor and professor.

Anita Moorjani 30:46 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:46 And he acknowledges in many interviews that he started off as a real skeptic, but his years of experience and research has actually changed his mind. What do you say to what I just read out from Bruce?

Anita Moorjani 31:01 I would agree, and I would say that the mind, because of my experience, and I experienced myself out of body... And again, language is limiting, so that out-of-body part of me, that part of me that to me is the part of me that- Has always lived and will always live. It's infinite. It's, um, it exists beyond the physical body. I would say that is the part that's connected to the mind. The brain is part of our biology. The mind is actually the bridge between our spirit and our brain. That's kind of how I would describe it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:40 That's how you see it. Wow.

Anita Moorjani 31:41 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:42 Hey guys, I really hope you're finding this useful. If you are and you want more content like it, please do check out my book, Make Change That Lasts: Nine Simple Ways to Break Free From the Habits That Are Holding You Back. It's in all the usual places as a paperback, e-book, and as an audiobook, which I'm narrating. Now, back to the video. So let's keep going with that story. Your physical body is in this hospital room.

Anita Moorjani 32:11 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:11 The doctors are saying to your family, "It's too late. I'm sorry, there's nothing we could do." There's tears, there's, there's fear, there's resignation. You can see your husband upset, your parents upset. Yet you at that time, your experience is that, now you were aware of all of that. You could sense their feelings and their emotions, but you h- you had this 360-degree perception. Again, I- I recognize that words are limiting, but you had this sort of-

Anita Moorjani 32:45 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:45 ... awareness that you'd never had before. Then what happens?

Anita Moorjani 32:49 So then, um, I started to feel myself continuing to expand. And so... And then I started to perceive that... So I was expanding, like, so that my peripheral senses were picking up things that were beyond this room, beyond this hospital, m- um, much beyond, as though, and this again really lacks words, as though another dimension was opening up, for want of a better way of putting it. Because s- um, other beings started to come into my awareness, and these beings were entities, spiritual beings, and I recognized some of them. I recognized my best friend who had died from cancer. She was there, and my dad was there, my dad who had died 10 years prior, who I had a terrible relationship with growing up. Um, and he was there to greet me, and all I felt from him was pure, unconditional love. And so even though we don't have physical bodies, it's almost as though they, um, they communicate with you telepathically, but it's like not in sentences, not in language. It's almost like their energy imprints itself onto you so you know who they are and you know what they want you to know. You know immediately. I, I was like, it was like, "Oh, wow, my dad. He loves me unconditionally." I had never felt that level of love from my dad, and he wanted me to know that he really loved me. He'd always loved me, but he had never known how to show it because of how his culture had brought him up. And, um, it was just incredible to, to find that out.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:51 It feels almost like a stupid question, given what you've just said, but I guess what I'm wondering is, your dad had died 10 years previously.

Anita Moorjani 35:06 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:07 I'm sure that was very upsetting for you. But of course, you had this very fractured relationship as well. Did your NDE, your near-death experience, where you felt as if you'd experienced your father in a different way, now that you're back in the physical world, has it changed your relationship with your dad?

Anita Moorjani 35:28 Oh, 100%. 100% because my dad was the one that said to me, and we're jumping ahead, but my dad was the one that said to me on that side, um, and when I say said, I mean, you know, imprinted on me, that it wasn't my time. He's the one that said, "Now that you know who you truly are, you have to go back and live your life fearlessly." So my dad was the one who instilled fear in, in me during life, but he was the one that broke that cycle in death.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:02 Okay. I- I mean, it's really powerful to hear you explain that experience in your words. The fact that he said to you, "It's not your time," and given that you are here now-

Anita Moorjani 36:20 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:21 ... many years on, right? After being told you had a terminal diagnosis and that you were dying, basically, or you were, you know, almost dead-

Anita Moorjani 36:29 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:30 ... how do you explain the fact that you came back? Was that a choice you think you made, or did it just happen?

Anita Moorjani 36:39 It was actually a choice because... So even before my dad said that, I was given the choice as to whether I wanted to come back. So I reached a point where I was told, um... It's, so it's like a state of clarity. And there's no one entity telling you anything. It's like you're starting to gain this understanding because you're now no longer trapped by your physical body and the limitations of only your experiences from this life. When you're out of the body, you get, um, you become aware of the grander picture of why your soul chose this life and these circumstances. Why did I get sick? Um, why did I not follow what I came here to do? So there's like a whole grander picture that opens up, and there's this clarity. And I actually understood how it w- it came to be that all the thoughts and decisions and choices I had made in my life had led me to that point of dying in that hospital bed. And I'm... I don't want to suggest that anybody who's sick or dying, that it's their fault because they made the wrong choices. That's not the case at all. It's never anybody's fault. But I do want people to know that there's a lot of things that we do that contribute, so you can change those things.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:04 Mm-hmm.

Anita Moorjani 38:04 So I understood how it was that I had contributed to me being in that state. And I also understood that I was much more powerful than I had ever been led to believe. I'm not inferior because I'm a woman. And so as I understood who I truly am, that's when I started to understand, oh, I had never loved myself. I'd never felt worthy. I never knew that I actually mattered, and my soul is here to experience itself to its fullest, because I had always made myself small. I was always the doormat. So as I was learning all this and absorbing all this because I was getting to know my soul, I reached this point where I was getting the message that if you keep going further from here, you won't be able to turn back. Like, this is the end, and if, uh, so you have to turn back now. But I didn't want to turn back because no part of me wanted to leave this amazing space, this amazing feeling I had, and go back into a sick and dying body. And it was at that point that my dad actually said that, "It's not your time." And, um, my dad said that, that, "You have gifts waiting for you, and you have a purpose and you haven't fulfilled it yet."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:32 Yeah, uh, remarkable to hear that. Do you remember that moment when you returned to your physical body and how that felt?

Anita Moorjani 39:43 Yes. Oh, yes, I remember that so clearly. So when my dad said, um, "Go back and live your life fearlessly," you know, basically I even wanted to know how do I find my purpose? How do I fulfill it? And the message I got was, you don't need to look for it. Just be yourself. Be yourself, love yourself, and live fearlessly. That's all. Your purpose will unfold for you. You don't have to chase it, pursue it. And so that's when I made the decision to come back. The minute I made the decision to come back, and the second I made the decision to come back, it felt like I was starting to come into my body and my physical eyes started to open. I'd been in the coma for a little over a day, like, uh, 30 hours. And so my, um, my eyes started to open and I saw my family around me, and I started to say to them that, um, I, you know, I started to talk and I said, "I'm going to be fine. You don't have to worry about me. It's not my time. Dad is here." And I kept saying, "Dad is here." So at first they just thought it was the drugs messing with my mind, but they were also elated that my eyes were open and I was coming out of the coma. And so they immediately called the doctor on duty. Now, the doctor on duty was someone who'd never treated me before that morning. He had come in that morning, um, to check on the fluid in my lungs-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:17 Mm

Anita Moorjani 41:17 ... and to remove some fluid, but he'd never treated me before that. And when he walked in the room, I actually called him by his name. I said, "Oh, good afternoon, Dr. Chan." And he said, "How do you know my name?" I said, "Aren't you the doctor that came in this morning and took fluid out of my lungs?" And he said, "But you were in a coma. You couldn't possibly have been aware of that." And I just went, "Oh, I was?" Because for me in that moment, in that state, I was really feeling kind of discombobulated, like I had one foot on each side.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:50 Mm-hmm.

Anita Moorjani 41:50 I was still somewhat aware that, that this whole, uh, this whole other realm existed-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:57 Mm-hmm

Anita Moorjani 41:57 ... right here. It's not like I traveled trillions of miles away into the ethers. It's like they exist right here, this whole other dimension, and that's why I call that the world of love. And this physical dimension and the messages we get from here is the world of fear.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:17 Mm-hmm.

Anita Moorjani 42:17 The messages we get from there is love. And so, um, I was aware that it's right here.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:24 Mm-hmm.

Anita Moorjani 42:25 So I didn't know that I had been closed off from this world. So I was saying, "Really? I was in a coma?" Anyway, he left the room and I said to my husband, I said to Danny, "Why was he so surprised, um, that I recognized him? Isn't he the doctor that said that I won't even make it through the night? Didn't he say that yesterday?" And that's when Danny said, "He didn't even say that in the room. You couldn't possibly have heard it. He said it down the hallway at the nurse's station. He, he did not say that in your presence." And that's when they realized something had happened.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:01 Okay. Right.

Anita Moorjani 43:03 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:04 A lot to get my head around there.

Anita Moorjani 43:05 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:06 Okay. So let's go back to this term near-death experience-

Anita Moorjani 43:12 Okay

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:13 ... for a moment. Now, I wanna say right at the start here, I'm very open-minded, right?

Anita Moorjani 43:17 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:17 So I totally am bought into this story and want to learn more.

Anita Moorjani 43:23 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:24 At the same time, I'm aware that there may be some skeptics who are listening or watching.

Anita Moorjani 43:29 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:29 Right? So let's just break it down a little bit. Okay?

Anita Moorjani 43:34 Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:36 And I'm reminded of a conversation I had with this neuroscientist, Anil Seth, um, who is maybe one of the leading researchers in this country, and maybe globally, in terms of consciousness, but through a scientific lens. Okay? And I, I appreciate that's not everything, right? But in that conversation with Anil, right here at this table, we brought up NDEs, and I said ... I think I said something to Anil like, um, "Anil, how ... What do you make of these things? Because there are so many documented cases."

Anita Moorjani 44:14 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:14 Right? And he goes, "Yeah, it's fascinating." He said, "One explanation for some of them," and I don't wanna misspeak for him 'cause he's not here, but my recollection is that one of the things he said was that, look, there could be a couple of explanations for some of them, right? So one might be in an operating theater where the anesthetic isn't fully, you know, at its max capacity. So maybe, you know, someone's partially anesthetized, and they have some sort of awareness. And when they come back, you know, to full awakeness, maybe that's part of the explanation. That's one of the things he said. Also, he said that another biological explanation is that when the body is starting to shut down near death, the visual cortex starts to shut down, and the peripheries go first. So often people will describe, I'm not sure you said this, but many people do describe this kinda narrow white light that they see. And he said we could potentially have a biological explanation for that in terms of it's just the periphery of our vision and our visual cortex starting to shut down. First of all, I'd love to know your, your view of that.

Anita Moorjani 45:33 Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:34 Okay. But I guess one thing that wouldn't fit with that is even if you had been anesthetized, right? [laughs] Even if your visual cortex was shutting down as your kidneys were shutting down and your parts of your brain were shutting down, that doesn't explain how you could have heard something down the corridor in a nurse's station, does it?

Anita Moorjani 46:00 Yeah. No, it doesn't.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:01 So, so, you know, I'm excited to talk to you. I wanna know more about this story. I'm just trying to also be aware that some skeptics may be listening, and so I think it's important that we cover these points.

Anita Moorjani 46:13 I agree. I have no problem with that at all. I agree, and I like that you're doing that because I know what happened to me, and, uh, so that's why I'm totally open to people asking whatever they like.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:27 Mm-hmm.

Anita Moorjani 46:28 So, so a couple of things there. So first of all, I was aware that I was no longer in the physical body. So for me, it did feel like I was expanding beyond that room.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:44 Mm.

Anita Moorjani 46:44 But even beyond that, you know, I was expanding. It felt like I was no longer restricted to a three-dimensional, five-sensory body. And once I'm not restricted, it felt like I could feel, um, as I said, other people that, uh, were around me and treating me, but I knew what they were thinking, what they were saying. So even, um, so including, of course, this conversation, I was not only able to hear it. You see, we say hearing 'cause we're hearing with our ears. It's almost like an awareness. Oh, the doctor is saying that to my husband. And I even remember my mom speaking to another doctor who was there, who was my regular doctor. Uh, my mom was speaking to him, and she was literally begging him and saying, "Please, is there anything you can do? Is there nothing you can do?" And he ... I could feel that he was feeling so awkward. He was just unable to tell my mom that there was nothing that he could do. But I could also sense that he was feeling terrible that he hadn't been able to heal me or help me all these years.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:57 Yeah.

Anita Moorjani 47:57 So I'm not sure what to put it down to, but I really was not in my body, but I was everywhere. And all of these things that I describe does fit in with descriptions of near-death experiences. Now, what I didn't experience was the white light.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:16 Okay.

Anita Moorjani 48:17 And a lot of people who study near-death experiences, like Bruce Grayson, and, and by the way, I do accept the term NDE for my experience because it does have a lot of elements of a near-death experience. Um, so, uh, people like Bruce Grayson, s- researchers, have said to me that a huge possibility of why you didn't experience the white light was because you didn't have a sudden death. It was a slow decline into a coma.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:49 Right.

Anita Moorjani 48:49 Whereas people who are, who have a heart attack or who are in an accident or who fall off a mountain or fall off a, a boat, it's unexpected. It's completely unexpected. It's a shock. It's a surprise. There's an impact. And it's like their soul rushes out of their body or their, their life force just rushes-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:10 Mm

Anita Moorjani 49:10 ... out of their body. And that sensation maybe causes that tunnel-like feeling and effect. That's one theory.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:19 Yeah. That's interesting. Tell us what happened to your cancer

Anita Moorjani 49:24 So when I came back, um, I was telling my family, "I'm going to be fine. You don't have to worry." And I was connected to all these tubes, the food tubes and nutrition tubes and the heart rate monitor and the oxygen tube and everything. And so I was saying, "I'm not gonna need these tubes. I'm, I'm fine. I'm, I'll be fine to breathe." And what started to happen is that the fluid in my lungs, first of all, which had just been removed that morning and usually builds up again, it had just been removed that morning, as I had identified Dr. Chan had done, the fluid stopped building up. And then the tumors, the golf ball-sized tumors, started to soften, that within two, three, four days the doctors could feel it with their hands, without scans, without anything, that they were softening and shrinking and literally like they were melting. Um, and then I started eating food, and then I didn't need the oxygen tube anymore. And I was telling them, "I'm happy to eat food" and so they pulled out the food tube, and they didn't know what to write in my medical records because-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:39 I'm not surprised they didn't know what to write [laughs]

Anita Moorjani 50:41 [laughs] Yes. And in three weeks, uh, they did the lymph node biopsy, and they could find no trace of, um, cancer in my lymph- lymphatic system, and they said, "We've still got more tests to do." So I let them do all the tests they wanted because I was euphoric. And so I let them do whatever they wanted. They were giving me meds. They were doing tests. And I said, "You can do what you like because I know I'm gonna be fine. I know because I have experienced who I really am, and I know how powerful I am, and I'm more powerful than anything you guys do." [laughs] I actually felt that way. I felt that my soul, if, when my soul knows, when I know why I'm here, who I'm supposed to be, nothing can get in the way. And so they were so shocked. My doctor, my oncologist, actually made the gesture of tossing my medical file into the trash. He was like, "I have no idea what to write in here. This is meaningless" and he just made the gesture as though he was tossing it in the trash. But I had these open skin lesions that I was told, um, would need surgery to s- to heal because my body didn't even have enough nutrition to heal it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:05 Mm-hmm.

Anita Moorjani 52:05 Um, but the open skin lesions started to heal themselves. In f- they were waiting for me to get stronger because my body was still weak, so I started physiotherapy with them in the hospital. They were waiting for me to get stronger so that I could do the bone marrow biopsy, which is more grueling and painful.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:24 Mm-hmm.

Anita Moorjani 52:25 And they did the bone marrow biopsy, no trace of cancer, and then they did the final scans and MRI, and they were shocked. They said, "This doesn't happen. This just doesn't happen."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:37 How long after your coma, how long after that day were you told you no longer had cancer?

Anita Moorjani 52:46 So it was five weeks after that day that they told me they couldn't find any trace of cancer in my body, and they... And so this is after doing all the biopsies and all the tests.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:59 Okay, I just wanna, uh, highlight that point. You had end-stage cancer, advanced cancer. It was ravaging your body. You were in a coma. The doctors are saying, "It's too late." Telling your family, "I'm really sorry. There's nothing more we can do." Not only do you come back, but five weeks later you're cancer-free.

Anita Moorjani 53:21 [laughs] Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:23 Okay, so I'm a, a Western-trained medical doctor. We certainly do not learn about anything like this at medical school. But as I've gone through my career, like many of the doctors I know who... I would say a lot of the best doctors I know, the more patients they see, the more they realize how much they don't know. But I genuinely mean that. I've seen that.

Anita Moorjani 53:51 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:51 And I think a story like that, and I, and I, I'd love to know your experience of the medical profession around that story, but I think people tend to take one of two approaches. I think the, the more usual approach in medicine is almost to pretend it didn't happen.

Anita Moorjani 54:17 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:18 And go, "I don't get it. Let's just not talk about it. I don't understand that." You know, we, we have these phrases in medicine, idiopathic, right? Basically, we don't know what causes it, right? Or, you know, spontaneous remission.

Anita Moorjani 54:34 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:34 Right? I'm not criticizing anyone here.

Anita Moorjani 54:37 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:37 I get it. It's so far removed from our training. Like many doctors just won't know, what, what do I do with that? How does that help me with my patients? Like Anita's experience when I've got a patient next week who comes in with a lump, and we do a biopsy, and we find out it's a lymphoma, what can I use from Anita's experience to help that patient, right? So I understand that. At the same time, there are other doctors who go, "Wow, I wonder what's going on there."

Anita Moorjani 55:11 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:12 We don't know about that. What else do we not know? Right? So I kind of feel those are the sort of two approaches, and there's so many cases, maybe not identical to yours, but there's many cases of cancer. These are documented cases where- We as a profession didn't think people were gonna get better-

Anita Moorjani 55:30 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:31 ... but they did. I don't know if you've read Cured by Jeff Rediger.

Anita Moorjani 55:35 Oh, I don't know that one.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:36 He's a, I think he was a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, but again, a senior, you know, well-respected clinician who has documented in his book all kinds of conditions getting better that we can't explain. Right? So my approach is to go, "Wow." And to be clear to anyone who's listening, this has been documented. There's evidence of everything you're talking about, right?

Anita Moorjani 56:02 Yes, it has.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:04 And of course, you mentioned Dr. Bruce Greyson at University of Virginia. He's gone and documented all this as well.

Anita Moorjani 56:08 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:10 So we know that you had cancer, it was advanced, and we know that you don't have it.

Anita Moorjani 56:15 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:15 And it only took five weeks to heal. Like, even that for me, it's like, wow, it only took five weeks to heal. Any comments on what I've just said?

Anita Moorjani 56:26 No, you were very accurate. You articulated it very well. But, um, perhaps, okay, let me elaborate on a couple of things. I loved what you said earlier about how doctors, they don't know what to do about it, so they almost pretend like it never happened, and I have experienced that-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:46 Mm-hmm

Anita Moorjani 56:47 ... with doctors, with my own doctor, who didn't know how to explain it. And when I told him what I experienced, that I had the NDE, he completely believed me, and he said, "I have had other patients who have had experiences where they felt they went somewhere else." So he said that and, and, you know, in my presence, that's how- He believed me, and we had a little conversation. He said, "I knew there was something more because there's no way you could have healed in that time." And so he knew what I was saying was true. But what happened is that, um, some months later, I was, um, I was found by a reporter, a journalist who wanted to write about my story in the local newspaper. So this was in Hong Kong, local newspaper, and then she said, "Would your oncologist be willing to, um, to verify what you've just said?" And I said, "Yes, absolutely. He believed me when I told him, and he was the one who was there in the hospital who treated me." When she talked to him, though, he had a slightly different story because he is a senior oncologist at a very prestigious-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:06 Okay

Anita Moorjani 58:06 ... hospital. And he said, "She's lucky to be alive, but what she had was a spontaneous remission." And he said that, um, and then so the journalist said, "But what about what she saw on the other side?" He said, "Oh, that must have been the drugs messing, you know, playing with her mind."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:28 It's really interesting you sharing that. I'm gonna be really honest here, okay?

Anita Moorjani 58:33 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:33 Because this idea that we need to live an authentic life without any fear is something I've really been paying attention to over the last few years. Where does fear exist in my life? Why does that fear exist? How can I change that? So... And I think here's a good time to share that, okay? I went to one of Europe's most prestigious medical schools in Edinburgh. I have a honors degree in immunology.

Anita Moorjani 59:06 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:07 I have all kinds of letters after my name, right, given by the institutions. It would be much easier for me and would sit comfortably with me and my training to not have you on my show.

Anita Moorjani 59:22 [laughs] That occurred to me too.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:26 But I think in life, when we stop following our heart for the purpose of pleasing other people-

Anita Moorjani 59:41 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:42 ... I think it's a dangerous road to walk. And I also have walked that road for much of my life, and I don't wanna walk it anymore.

Anita Moorjani 59:52 Wow.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:53 Right? I don't want to walk it anymore. And so for me, I felt on some level I would be betraying myself if I didn't have you on my show because I'm, I'm fascinated by what you have to say, right? Ultimately, what am I doing? I'm, I'm hearing your story.

Anita Moorjani 1:00:18 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:19 I don't even need to believe your story.

Anita Moorjani 1:00:22 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:22 Right? I'm not- First of all, I'm not saying I don't believe it. I'm saying I don't even need to. To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free Breathing Guide that's gonna help you reduce stress, calm your mind, and boost your energy. In this guide, I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately. Even just one minute a day will start to make a big difference. To receive your free guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below. I think one of the problems we've had in the medical profession is that when people have powerful stories, we don't talk about them. So people then have to share that story in the darkness.

Anita Moorjani 1:01:07 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:07 Right? And then people start labeling that and say, "Oh, you know, that's not real." And I was thinking, "Well, hold on a minute. I, I, I'm very lucky to have this huge platform around the world to talk about health and to talk about how do we improve our lives."

Anita Moorjani 1:01:22 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:23 And so for me, I sat with myself and thought, "No, you know what? I wanna talk to Anita. I'm gonna follow my heart because I want to learn- I wanna go, "Well, what are we missing in medicine? What is it perhaps that we could learn from these experiences?" And the truth is, once you start digging into this field of NDEs, there's a lot of research out there.

Anita Moorjani 1:01:43 There is. There is.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:44 And I think for me, Anita, one thing I've realized is that our training is scientific, and it should be.

Anita Moorjani 1:01:58 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:59 But I think so many of us misunderstand science. Science is our attempt to explain reality.

Anita Moorjani 1:02:10 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:10 Right? Science isn't necessarily reality. It's our best attempt to explain it, right? So we know so many things that we thought were true 100 years ago, we now know to not be true.

Anita Moorjani 1:02:21 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:22 So I think we need a bit of humility to go with all these spontaneous remissions going on all around the world. What is it in medicine that we don't know? What is it that in 100 years we'll look back on now and go, "Man, those guys didn't know much, did they? You know, they, they still thought cancer was this or that," whereas we now know it's something else.

Anita Moorjani 1:02:40 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:41 So I think, I think basically what I'm trying to say is... Well, I think I'm saying two things there. One, I agree with you. We need to follow our hearts. And two, I think we need to all practice a little bit more humility.

Anita Moorjani 1:02:54 Wow. Everything you said there was so powerful for me. It really was, because I have related in everything you say. Like, first of all, let me be vulnerable, just like you said that you were afraid to have this conversation with me. So when I speak to doctors and scientists, and if we do so, like we are doing now, um, or if I'm speaking to skeptics on a podcast, um, or on an interview, what happens is that the audience of a person who has that kind of mind, obviously, that person is going to attract people like them. They're going to attract other skeptics and people who want more evidence. So what... When I share a story like that on such a podcast, it's also scary for me. It's also takes a leap of faith, and thoughts like that did cross my mind. And so there were times when I thought, "Oh, maybe this interview was not meant to work out to protect me." And then it's like, "Oh, no, the interview is happening. Maybe it is time to take that leap of faith, that it's time-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:09 Mm

Anita Moorjani 1:04:09 ... to cross that divide" Because a huge portion of my audience, and I mean a huge portion of my audience, are, um, more on the spiritual side. Mind you, there are more and more doctors coming on board.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:23 Mm.

Anita Moorjani 1:04:23 I have oncologists who come to my events and say, "I've recommended your book to all my patients," and that's very heartening.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:30 I can believe that because here's the reality in medicine as I see it. If you've seen enough patients, and you've kept enough of an open mind-

Anita Moorjani 1:04:41 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:41 ... you will know that there are things going on all the time that you cannot explain.

Anita Moorjani 1:04:47 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:48 I've seen people get better, and I cannot... or back then I could not clearly explain the steps physiologically, biochemically, like they did this and this happened. I can't.

Anita Moorjani 1:05:04 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:04 And again, as I g- as I, as I s- I've already said, like you can either shut that down or go, "Wow. Well, we know a lot as doctors, and we're able to help a lot of people, but there's some people who are getting better and it's- and ain't got anything to do with us. Isn't that interesting?" You mentioned the word skeptic. What do skeptics of yours tend to say?

Anita Moorjani 1:05:27 Um, all kinds of things. I've even been told, um, "What if you were misdiagnosed?" Which it was... I had cancer for four years, and it would mean five different doctors had misdiagnosed it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:40 And this was in Hong Kong?

Anita Moorjani 1:05:41 This was in Hong Kong.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:43 So really great hospitals, you know?

Anita Moorjani 1:05:45 Like... Yes. They are offshoots of Sloan Kettering and all these, like-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:49 Big American hospitals

Anita Moorjani 1:05:50 ... big American hospitals. And I was, like even where I had the coma, was one of the biggest hospitals in Hong Kong. Um, and the, one of the top... It's one of the top most prestigious hospitals, and the senior oncologist there is very well known in Hong Kong.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:08 So, so let's just look at that skeptical comment for a second, okay? What if you were misdiagnosed? Now, it's a reasonable thing to say. If it was just one doctor, and there wasn't much diagnostic evidence, you could follow that thread and go, "Yeah, perhaps Anita was misdiagnosed," right? So she had this experience, she got better, but she never had it in the first place. The fact that you were in such a prestigious hospital, that you had five different doctors corroborate your diagnosis in different forms makes that unlikely-

Anita Moorjani 1:06:40 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:40 ... right, to say the least.

Anita Moorjani 1:06:41 That's right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:41 Okay? It makes it unlikely. Given that, and given what I know about your documented history, I think it's inarguable that you had cancer and now you don't.

Anita Moorjani 1:06:54 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:55 Right? We-

Anita Moorjani 1:06:55 That's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:56 We know that happens

Anita Moorjani 1:06:57 ... that happened.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:57 That, that is something that exists out there, yet people have cancer, and then for some people they don't.

Anita Moorjani 1:07:04 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:04 For whatever, uh, method or treatment they took to get to that place, right?

Anita Moorjani 1:07:11 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:11 When... In, in medicine, we'd call that in remission.

Anita Moorjani 1:07:13 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:14 Right. Okay. So I think we can acknowledge that that has happened. Where I guess people could say, "Okay, Anita, it's fu- it's really interesting to hear your experience and what you think it meant for you" because clearly you have learnt some powerful life lessons, which I'm hoping we get to shortly. That you've then gone and applied in your life

Anita Moorjani 1:07:41 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:41 And from what I can tell from you, and you know, I met you and your husband when you came into the house this morning, and there's such a lovely, warm energy from all of you, I'm, I will say

Anita Moorjani 1:07:51 Thank you

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:51 Um, you're clearly someone who's very happy and contented and living a meaningful life now. So at the very least, we can go, "Wow, this is the lady who had cancer, doesn't have cancer anymore, and through her diagnosis and her experience, she's learnt some powerful truths that she's used to help herself." And frankly, the life truths that you've learnt and you've written about in Dying to Be Me are truths that we can all use to help us, whether we have cancer or not.

Anita Moorjani 1:08:25 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:25 Would you agree with those statements?

Anita Moorjani 1:08:27 I would 100% agree. And I... And so what I love about what you're saying is you've captured the crux of what, why I share my message. And, um, so if I can share a little bit of my experience since then as to the things I've been dealing with in terms of skepticism or the opposite-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:48 Yeah, please do

Anita Moorjani 1:08:48 ... people who, who really support. So what happened is, subsequently, I, um, wrote my story for cathartic reasons. I just wrote and wrote it, and then I submitted it to a near-death experience, uh, website. I didn't even realize it was an NDE. But somebody sent me an, a link to a-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:10 Mm

Anita Moorjani 1:09:10 ... site called NDERF, and, uh, and I read some of the stories and I thought, "Wow, there's so many similarities." And then it said, "Have you had an NDE? Submit it to us and we would love to read it." So I submitted. I just copied and pasted everything I wrote and submitted it to NDERF, and I got a response very quickly from a, a Dr. Jeffrey Long. I don't know if you've heard of him.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:36 No.

Anita Moorjani 1:09:36 NDE researcher, but also a on- oncologist. So when he saw my account where I wrote about the cancer, he was extremely interested. He reached out right away, asked me more questions, asked if I was willing to share some of my doctor reports, and I was happy to. And he said, "Wow, this is really powerful. I'm going to publish it on the homepage of my website, but I'm not gonna put your full name." I said, "Perfect." He just put Anita M.'s NDE. It went viral, and I didn't realize it, and then it got picked up by another doctor who has, um, an area of interest in oncology. But he was, um... So he lived in Los Angeles, and he read the story. Somebody had sent it to him, the link from the NDERF. So his name was Dr. Coe. He picked it up, he read it, and he was extremely interested and wanted to talk to me. He said, "I happen to be going to Hong Kong for a business trip later this year. Would you be willing to meet with me?" I said, "Absolutely." He came to Hong Kong. He wanted to go look at my medical records. I took him to the hospital. We got my records. I had to tell them that I'm moving my treatment over to another doctor-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:58 Yeah

Anita Moorjani 1:10:58 ... and they released it to Dr. Coe. And when he read it, he's the one that showed me where it said the family have been informed. I mean, I was shocked. It was the first time I was looking at it with him in such detail. And-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:12 That must be nuts, like, to, to read that and go... Especially when you're well and healthy-

Anita Moorjani 1:11:17 And you're well, yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:17 ... to go... It, it, it must be such a surreal experience.

Anita Moorjani 1:11:21 Extremely surreal. I was sitting there with him reading it, and as he went through the medical, the, the results of each and the timeline, he's, like, writing it all down. And this is what he said to me. He said, "Lady, whichever way I look at it, you should be dead." And so he said to me, "You need to write a book, um, with your testimony." And he said, "I'm researching your case" And he shared with me, he said, "Actually, I'm very afraid of cancer, and so I actually hunt down what people call spontaneous remissions, and I want to go deep into each one to find out what it is that triggered it." And he said that, um, "The only thing I can say is that it was some kind of divine intervention." He actually said, "There's no way your body could have healed that. There were too many cancer cells and your body was too weak. I can only attribute it to divine intervention."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:19 Can I ask?

Anita Moorjani 1:12:20 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:22 You've spoken about this with many doctors and, and as you say that even at your events, and you, you gave a, a big event in Manchester last night. Do you see a pattern in terms of the doctors who are more open to your story compared to those who are closed-minded? Now, I guess anyone who's closed-minded probably wouldn't end up turning up at one of your events, I'm guessing.

Anita Moorjani 1:12:50 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:50 So it's kind of a skewed perception already. I guess what I'm getting at is...

Anita Moorjani 1:12:58 Like, is there a difference between-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:59 Is there a difference?

Anita Moorjani 1:13:00 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:00 Have you noticed a difference?

Anita Moorjani 1:13:01 Very huge difference. The ones that are open, like yourself, like Dr. Coe, and even my, um, GP, Brian Walker, who was there, all the ones that are open and the ones who come to my events, they're curious. They want to understand it because they want it for their patients. They want it to help them be better practitioners.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:23 Mm.

Anita Moorjani 1:13:23 And I love that. I love that passion. The ones who are more closed, who are really skeptical, it's almost like they want me to feel that I am mistaken, that I'm crazy. It's almost like they take, they're trying to take it away from me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:39 Well, because in some ways it threatens their identity.

Anita Moorjani 1:13:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:43 Right? And I, and I, and I- Have sympathy, right? Have sympathy for them because acknowledging what you say has happened to you and what the evidence shows has happened to you, for some people it will be too threatening.

Anita Moorjani 1:14:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:01 It's like, I, I don't know what to do with that. It starts to challenge how I see the human body, how I treat patients. And I think for some people it's just easier to just go, "Ah, you know, whatever. She's a one-off-

Anita Moorjani 1:14:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:16 ... this doesn't happen. Let me just crack on with my job."

Anita Moorjani 1:14:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:19 I guess I was wondering, was there any cultural difference? Because you said before in your description, um, y- I think you were comparing people who suddenly, uh, get sick, like a heart attack, and they often see that narrow tunnel, and then you compared it with yours, which was much more gradual. So maybe that's a reason why you didn't see that tunnel. You said something about the soul leaving the body.

Anita Moorjani 1:14:46 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:47 And then I thought, wow, is that to do... is your interpretation of that in some way informed by your culture? Because you grew up in an Indian family, I grew up in an Indian family, and in many Indian families, there is a belief, certainly in Hindu families-

Anita Moorjani 1:15:05 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:06 ... that the soul is eternal.

Anita Moorjani 1:15:07 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:08 Right? So do you think in any way your upbringing has shaped your interpretation of what happened?

Anita Moorjani 1:15:16 I believe that my upbringing has made it easier for me to accept what happened and allow it to unfold in the way that it did to allow the healing. So I think, for example, I think that somebody- let's take, let's say somebody is really adamant on debunking me, and, uh, is somebody who is actually, um, trying to convince me that it's my mind, it didn't happen, or I'm crazy. I think for something like this to happen to someone like that is less likely, because their mind won't be able to wrap itself around something like this.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:02 Mm.

Anita Moorjani 1:16:02 So that's what I believe. So even if my beliefs were shaped by my Hindu culture, although, uh, my upbringing was I- it was a Chinese city, Hong Kong, a British school, and Indian Hindu parents-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:14 Oh, what a blend-

Anita Moorjani 1:16:15 It was a-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:15 ... of inputs-

Anita Moorjani 1:16:15 It was-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:15 ... into your young mind

Anita Moorjani 1:16:17 ... yes, it was a real blend. And I, I do believe that I, uh, I had, I did have a cultural, I'm gonna say advantage, a cultural advantage in that I wasn't, my mind wasn't fixed on any particular-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:36 Mm

Anita Moorjani 1:16:36 ... way of thinking or any particular belief and I, I... So I think it was quite open in that way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:43 Yeah. Now, I can't remember when I first heard about your story. It might have been my wife a few years ago who mentioned it to me, but I do know that Dr. Gabor Maté-

Anita Moorjani 1:16:53 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:54 ... who's been on this show I think on four occasions now, I think on maybe two of them he's mentioned you. So-

Anita Moorjani 1:17:02 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:02 ... in terms of, um, credibility-

Anita Moorjani 1:17:06 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:06 ... so th- this is, this is really interesting for me. In the interview that I heard with Bruce Greyson, I think it was on Tim Ferriss-

Anita Moorjani 1:17:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:14 ... he said 40 or 50 years ago when he was studying this, or he started to, in some ways it was a bit like career suicide. I think he was told actually at his university, "If you continue studying like this, you're not gonna get tenure."

Anita Moorjani 1:17:32 Wow.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:33 And so I think he changed university.

Anita Moorjani 1:17:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:37 I think so. But he said it's, it's different now. And it reminds me of many other things, you know, th- this idea that we don't know everything and that we're constantly learning. Does that give you hope in terms of your experience and other people who have experienced what you have in terms of gaining acceptance? Or does it not matter to you?

Anita Moorjani 1:18:01 So it matters and it doesn't, and I want to say this properly because the reason I share it is because I actually want to help people. So it matters to me for them, not for me. That's what I'm trying to say. For their sake, it matters to me that they understand this because I think that if people understood how important it is to n- to live a life knowing that we have purpose and there's a reason for living and how much that actually drives your wellbeing and for people to know who they are, it, I think that their lives would be so much better. And I think it's a message for everyone, not just people who have cancer. But I think that if people want to debunk me or dismiss me or, um, yes, completely dismiss me, I guess what I'm saying is that it's their loss not mine. But it matters in the sense that-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:00 Mm

Anita Moorjani 1:19:00 ... I guess my reason for doing it is to help people. And so I have noticed that there are some minds that aren't ready to be changed, and so I try, I, I don't try to convince people because the more you try to convince someone, the more they're gonna argue and push back. And what happens is that if they're arguing, I find myself getting more, um, caught up in this spiral-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:28 Wow

Anita Moorjani 1:19:28 ... of trying to prove it, but I don't need to prove it to anybody.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:31 Yeah. Well, that's quite telling about someone's personality in and of itself, isn't it? Because let's say you don't believe you.

Anita Moorjani 1:19:40 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:40 Let's say you're someone who right now is listening to this and goes-

Anita Moorjani 1:19:43 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:43 ... "Yeah, Anita, I like what you have to say about living life fearlessly. I'm not sure about your interpretation."

Anita Moorjani 1:19:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:51 If you then feel a need to go and search for evidence and debunk you and email this other doctor-

Anita Moorjani 1:19:57 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:57 ... and email you, I think it says a lot about your own personality and perhaps the fragility of one's identity-

Anita Moorjani 1:20:07 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:07 ... because you could just take the approach, "Wow, interesting. Anita's had a powerful life experience. She's clearly learnt some cool things that she's applied, and she's rocking it now. Amazing. I don't buy it. I'm gonna crack on with my life."

Anita Moorjani 1:20:23 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:23 It, it could be that simple.

Anita Moorjani 1:20:24 Yes, it could. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:25 Right? [laughs] And I think that's quite a healthy approach. You know, everyone's got their right to an opinion. No one's got the right to invalidate your experience.

Anita Moorjani 1:20:35 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:36 They can't do. You experienced what you experienced, right? That is real to you.

Anita Moorjani 1:20:42 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:42 Right? If someone doesn't believe you or goes, "I'm not sure. I think there's an explanation, but hey, good for her," I think that's okay, and they can still learn these lessons. I mean, in your TED Talk, you, you spoke about the importance of living life fearlessly, the importance of self-love-

Anita Moorjani 1:21:00 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:00 ... the importance of humor, love, and joy, that life is a gift, not a chore-

Anita Moorjani 1:21:04 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:04 ... that the most important thing is to be yourself. I think we could all benefit from those five life lessons-

Anita Moorjani 1:21:11 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:12 ... irrespective of cancer, right?

Anita Moorjani 1:21:14 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:14 And what you just said was fascinating for me, and it's something I have also evolved. There's been a public-facing part of my career now for maybe 11 years, and I think when I started, I was full of passion, and I wanted to convince people. I wanted to change their mind. "No, no, no," right? "We, we can help so many problems with our lifestyle. This is what you gotta do," right? And I th- I think last year or the year before, I watched my TED Talk. I hadn't seen it in years. I was like, "Who's that guy?" Like-

Anita Moorjani 1:21:49 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:49 ... I, I was, like, really full of passion and sort of trying to get my point across, and you know, that was who I was at that time, and I'm, I'm, I'm very proud of who I was back then. But I feel, I feel these days I'm not here to convince anyone.

Anita Moorjani 1:22:04 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:05 Do you know what I mean? It's, because it's a much... It's that lesson, be yourself, right?

Anita Moorjani 1:22:09 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:09 One of those lessons. This is about me being myself and following my heart-

Anita Moorjani 1:22:14 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:14 ... and my curiosity. And that's what I've realized is how I serve the most people is by actually serving myself first.

Anita Moorjani 1:22:24 100%. You've got it. That's exactly... You've just articulated my attitude exactly about sharing my story. So, um, I do it. I love sharing it because it's a constant. It keeps me living my life in that joyful way, and, um, and I share it because it actually helps people for those who are interested. But what's also been interesting is that now that I've been sharing it for a while, I've had people come to me s- say, "You know, in the beginning, I was really skeptical. I really doubted you. But now over the years, I'm actually seeing that there is something to what you're saying, and I know you're telling the truth."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:07 Yeah. To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits. We can all make short-term change, but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life? Often, they don't, and that's why in this free guide, I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take. They're really, really effective. If you wanna get hold of that free guide right now, all you have to do is click the link in the description box below. I mean, the truth is, and Gabor's mentioned this on this show, other researchers have, you know, in The Myth of Normal, he goes through in quite a lot of detail the associations in the scientific literature-

Anita Moorjani 1:23:53 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:53 ... between our emotional health-

Anita Moorjani 1:23:56 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:56 ... uh, repressed emotions, not being who we are, excessive people-pleasing-

Anita Moorjani 1:24:02 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:02 ... right? He's got all kinds of references in there. I've gone through a lot of it for my new book about the relationship between those traits and things like autoimmune disease, things like cancer. And again, as you said before, it's not about blame-

Anita Moorjani 1:24:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:19 ... at all. It's about empowerment.

Anita Moorjani 1:24:22 It is about empowerment.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:23 So with that in mind then, almost two decades on, right, what do you think caused your cancer?

Anita Moorjani 1:24:34 I think that, um, I believed I was worthless. I had no self-esteem. I didn't love myself. I used to serve everybody before me. I put everybody before me. I did not, um, give myself or do anything for myself. I believed it was selfish to take care of myself, and I didn't feel my life had much meaning or purpose. And my soul, again, the soul was, I would say, repressed because I did not realize that I had anything important to say or to share or to show the world. And I've never allowed myself to be who I am, shine my light, speak out. Like today, I'm not afraid to speak out about many different things. I even sometimes touch a little bit on gender disparity and how, uh, women's energies, women need to voice, um, their energies more because our world is imbalanced. And I'll talk about all kinds of things that I pa- that I'm passionate about or that are close to my heart. The old me would never Have done that. I would have been so careful what I talk about. I would have been so careful not to offend people. And I honestly believed that being subservient was a positive trait because that's what I was socialized to believe. I was socialized to put everybody ahead of me, to see everybody as elevated and to be of service to everybody. I was socialized, like, to even see God in everybody's eyes, which is great. It's a great trait. But it was only when I crossed over, when I died, for the first time I saw God in my own eyes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:50 In your TEDx talk, when you were making the point about life is a gift, not a chore, I think you said that your cancer was a gift.

Anita Moorjani 1:27:01 Yes, it was.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:03 You said the cancer was not killing you, you were killing yourself before you got the cancer. The cancer saved your life.

Anita Moorjani 1:27:13 Yes, 100%.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:15 Can you expand?

Anita Moorjani 1:27:16 Yes. So what I was living was not a life. I was not fulfilling what I had come here to be. Um, and I was always putting myself last. I was always miserable. I was always feeling left out. That was not a life. And it was only when I got the cancer did I start taking care of myself. However, even though I started taking care of myself, I was always still a people pleaser and was still worried about putting other people out. So for example, even as I got sicker and sicker, when people would come and offer to help, when they would say, "Oh, we'll cook your meals for you," or, "We'll help drive you," I would say, "No, no, it's fine. Don't do that." I didn't want to trouble anyone.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:13 This is before the coma?

Anita Moorjani 1:28:15 Before the coma-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:16 Yeah

Anita Moorjani 1:28:16 ... but when I was sick with cancer.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:18 Yeah.

Anita Moorjani 1:28:18 So I'm deteriorating and getting sicker.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:20 And you still won't accept help?

Anita Moorjani 1:28:22 I wouldn't accept help. And so I'm getting sicker and sicker and people... Because I didn't want to put anyone out. I didn't want to bother anyone, and I was always so afraid of bothering people, putting people out. And so I'm getting sicker and sicker and people are saying, "We can help you. We can drive you to your doctor's appointment. Is there anything we can do?" And I would say, "No, no. Don't take time out of your day to do that." I would still be there when people called if they needed a shoulder to cry on, and here's me getting sicker and dying. And it wasn't cancer that healed me from being a people pleaser. It was death. And that's why I tell people, "Don't wait. Don't wait until you die."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:10 If there's only one message you could leave people with after your experience, what would it be?

Anita Moorjani 1:29:18 It would be to be yourself, to get to know yourself. It's so important to get to know who you are. And the other piece of that is it's really important for you to have a life that you look forward to living. If you're living a life where you hate your job or you're in situation or relationships that you're not happy in and it's prolonged on and on and you're not looking forward to every day, that's not living. That's not a good life at all. And continuing to live like that on, in a, for a prolonged period of time depletes your energy, and that's what I believe eventually leads to your body breaking down. But if you have a reason for living, if you have a reason to wake up every morning, you're much... You're going to be much healthier. And if you're not well, you're much more likely to heal than someone who lives a life that has no purpose or meaning for them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:26 How do you help someone who feels that they are an excessive people pleaser? Because on one level, we're social animals-

Anita Moorjani 1:30:36 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:36 ... right? So... Well, on many levels we are. So we wanna be, um, doing things for other people. We want to be of value to the people around us. It, it's really about balance, isn't it? But how do you help people navigate that? Because we don't wanna get to a point... And I, I kind of feel many of us have struggled with people-pleasing.

Anita Moorjani 1:31:01 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:01 Many people still do. I, I know I certainly did. Excessive people-pleasing, I should say, to be a bit more accurate. But then it's, it's good, isn't it, to do things for others? H- how do you help people sort of get the right balance there?

Anita Moorjani 1:31:16 So I'm going to give you a tool I use in my workshops, and this is something that I use for myself. I developed it for myself to help me live life ever since I had the near-death experience, and it'll take a few minutes to explain. So I believe, especially since, uh, the near-death experience, that basically we are kind of made up of life force energy. Let's say we give energy a currency, okay? Just energy, the amount of energy you have to expend every day. Let's just give it a currency. So let's say when you have a good night's sleep and you wake up in the morning, a good night's sleep gives you 12 units of energy And then what I do is every day I will ask myself, "Have I had a good night's sleep, bad night's sleep?" You know, and you give it... So a good night's sleep is 12 units of energy. Then the next thing is if you have a healthy breakfast, it gives you more units of energy, let's say two or three units of energy, nice healthy breakfast. But let's say you're someone who lives a rushed life and you don't have time for a good breakfast. You grab something cold on the run, and you're eating it on your way to your car. So that breakfast didn't give you any energy. Probably your body needed to use energy to digest it. And then you get in the car and you're in traffic, and then being in traffic, you, um, you're getting impatient, you're running late, uh, so you use another two or three units of energy. Let's say you go to a job you hate, where you don't like your boss and your boss is a bully. Your boss takes up another four units of your energy. So let's say you're now down to three or four units of energy at the end of the day, and you go home, and maybe you're in a relationship you're not happy in, so another couple of units of energy. And then you look at your dining table and there's this pile of bills that are unpaid and you're not sure how you're gonna pay them. So you're at zero. And now let's say when you go back to bed, because you've had a bad day, you have a sleepless night, and so you only wake up with seven units of energy instead of 12. And then you go through this whole thing again. And so at the end of the day, you're in negative. You're in energy deficit. If you live a life like that, you're continuing to be in energy deficit. You're... The deficit gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Unfortunately, that's how most people live their lives. Now, here's the, an alternative scenario. The alternative is you wake up with 12 units of energy. You're in a relationship you're really happy in, so you love seeing your partner, so you get another two units of energy spending life with them. You then eat a good, healthy breakfast. You get another two, so you're up at 16 units. You love your work. Whatever it is, you just love what you do, and so that shoots you up to 20, 22 units of energy by the end of the day. You're back with your partner, and because you love to d- your work, you're, you make enough money to pay the bills, and you go to bed with, um, with energy equity. The next morning, you wake up with another 12 units of energy. And so what I've realized is that it's super important to have energy equity. Now, with that equity, you can then help more people just by being around them because even your energy-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:53 Mm

Anita Moorjani 1:34:53 ... your demeanor, your joy uplifts them. But when you're in energy deficit, you think you're helping people, but you're bringing an energy depleted person-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:05 Yeah

Anita Moorjani 1:35:05 ... wherever you go. You're actually draining on people, and then you end up doing things out of obligation, which is even more energy depleting. And then you eventually even start to have physical symptoms yourself. So that's how I look at life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:22 Yeah.

Anita Moorjani 1:35:22 And I've realized that energy equity is my number one value over and above finances or anything because only with energy equity can I have good relationships and can I have the energy to actually, um, to actually handle difficult situations. There are going to be times that's gonna require larger chunks-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:45 Mm

Anita Moorjani 1:35:45 ... of my energy, but I can only give it what they deserve. Like a spouse can get sick or parents can be aging, but if you're in energy deficit, they feel like a burden, but when you're in energy equity, you can really help more people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:01 I love that explanation. I haven't heard it put like that before. It's a beautiful concept. One thing I've always found fascinating is when people come to certain realizations that are the same, but through different journeys.

Anita Moorjani 1:36:23 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:24 Right? So I feel we've had similar realizations in life, but I've not had cancer. I've not had a near-death experience, but I've had my own life journey. I've had my own obstacles to overcome. So I kind of love that because I think it gives us confidence that, well, maybe these are universal truths.

Anita Moorjani 1:36:42 Yes, exactly. That's exactly what I feel that... And I am noticing more and more that people are stumbling across these similar truths.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:52 Yeah.

Anita Moorjani 1:36:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:55 I just wanna run through those life lessons, and I wonder if you could give me or give my audience two or three lines on each one.

Anita Moorjani 1:37:03 Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:04 And I think we've covered them, uh, throughout this conversation, but just to really land them with people, we started off with l- live life fearlessly.

Anita Moorjani 1:37:14 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:16 You've already said quite a bit on that, but do you wanna just kind of summarize why that's so important?

Anita Moorjani 1:37:21 Um, so living life fearlessly, w- when I say it, I really mean being yourself fearlessly. And so it is really important because, um, by being fearless, it means you're doing, you're following your heart. You're doing what your soul wants. You're not following the crowd. You're not worried about failing. You're not worried about shame, and all these things that keep our souls small. It sets you free when you live your life fearlessly-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:50 Yeah

Anita Moorjani 1:37:50 ... especially when you allow yourself to be yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:54 Second life lesson, the importance of self-love, and in your TED Talk, you s- you said that you believe that one of the reasons you got cancer ... was because you did not love yourself enough

Anita Moorjani 1:38:07 Yes. I tell people, "Love yourself like your life depends on it," because it does. And that little energy exercise I gave you, it is an act of self-love. So when you're able to do things that you love, like if you... Uh, you have to love yourself to feel worthy enough to be in a relationship where your partner loves you. You have to love yourself enough to know that you can go and seek out work that's meaningful, that gives you energy. In other words, having that energy equity, either loving ourselves feeds our energy equity, or doing things that gives us energy equity causes us to love ourselves. It's actually both. It works both ways.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:00 Wow. Lesson number three: the importance of humor, love, and joy.

Anita Moorjani 1:39:05 Oh, I love [laughs] that one, humor, love, and joy. It's so important, and it's so healing. One of the other things I've noticed is that people really take themselves seriously. People who are in the, um, spiritual world, spirituality sometimes is taken way too seriously. I really think that humor needs to be something that needs to be highlighted in every practice, in medical practice, spiritual practice. I think patients who are in hospitals and clinics, they need to be given entertainment that make them laugh. It should be part of the healing protocol.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:45 As they say, laughter is the best medicine.

Anita Moorjani 1:39:47 Yes, exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:48 Okay, lesson number four: life is a gift, not a chore.

Anita Moorjani 1:39:54 Life is a gift because... And again, this is something that I felt when I was on the other side. I realized that I had chosen to come here. Even though I had been suffering and it felt amazing on that side, I realized that we choose to come here to experience it because we want to. We want the adventure. And it felt like if we knew that and if we knew who we truly are, our lives would be very different. And most of us believe that we are victims of our lives, when actually not. Maybe we f- we can't control certain circumstances when we're children, but as we grow up, we have to realize and become empowered and learn to be empowered that we actually have a lot more autonomy over our lives than we realize.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:51 Yeah, and I've heard you say that each and every one of your challenges are a gift.

Anita Moorjani 1:40:55 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:56 I love that. It's how I choose to look at my life, and I think that word choose and the concept of choice is really, really important for each and every one of us because you don't have to choose to look at your challenges as a gift. You could choose to say, "There's nothing I can do."

Anita Moorjani 1:41:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:17 You know, these things happen. These bad things have happened. Of course my life is in the state in which it's in. And no one's gonna necessarily say there's anything wrong with that, but it has a consequence, doesn't it? If you think you are a victim to your life, that has a consequence, which is you're not empowered. Whereas if you choose-

Anita Moorjani 1:41:36 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:37 ... because you can change your mindset. You have changed your mindset from pre-coma to post-coma.

Anita Moorjani 1:41:43 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:43 Right? You're a different person. You're in the same... Well, I don't know if you feel you're in the same body, but it feels like there's a different energy in that body from what there was before you, before you had that experience.

Anita Moorjani 1:41:54 Completely different, yes. Um, no part of me feels like the same person.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:59 Yeah, and, and, and in your TED Talk, again, you said something which I thought was so powerful. If you are currently in a challenge and it doesn't feel like a gift, it means you haven't got to the end yet.

Anita Moorjani 1:42:13 Yes, and I truly believe that. 'Cause most people believe, um, and are socialized to believe that life happens to us, that we're victims, as I said, and all these challenges happens to us. But in actuality, from the perspective of the soul, the grander perspective, is that life is happening for us.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:35 Yeah.

Anita Moorjani 1:42:36 It's happening to evolve us.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:38 Yeah. And lesson number five, which you've sort of covered already, the most important thing is to be yourself. It's to be authentic.

Anita Moorjani 1:42:51 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:51 Now, what, what does that word authentic mean to you?

Anita Moorjani 1:42:54 It means to be unafraid to even be vulnerable, unafraid to be wrong, and to not be dictated by shame. Uh, most people's biggest fear is shame. Shame and embarrassment or being called out. But if we lost that fear, it would allow us to be more authentic.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:17 Yeah.

Anita Moorjani 1:43:17 And don't fear failing. Don't fear failing. Because the fear of failing keeps most people stuck and locked. And, uh, also one last thing about that is that people often say that fear keeps you safe. I actually think fear keeps you shackled. Love keeps you safe.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:38 Oh, that's beautiful. Going back to this theme that you don't need to die or get near to death to learn what you have learnt, there are other ways, aren't there, where people can experience similar things?

Anita Moorjani 1:43:52 There are other ways, yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:54 You know, I, I have a practice, um, that I often do. I stopped doing it for a while, but I've, I've started again quite recently. Um, there's a chap called Erwin Lacor who lives in America. He founded a company called MovNat. It's about natural movement, but he's also really into breath hold meditation.

Anita Moorjani 1:44:16 Ah, okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:17 And that's his thing. But essentially, without any hyperventilation, which is what- Wim Hof teaches

Anita Moorjani 1:44:23 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:23 ... none of that. You just do really slow, calm breaths, and then you take an inhale and you hold your breath. And basically, from only being able to do one minute, within four weeks I could hold my breath for four and a half minutes. Okay? My physiology did not change in just four weeks. What changed was my mind. So I learnt how to really quieten my mind, how thoughts and emotions use up energy.

Anita Moorjani 1:44:57 Yeah, they do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:58 And the, the more you're able to quieten your mind, the longer you're able to hold your breath.

Anita Moorjani 1:45:06 Wow.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:07 It, it really is so powerful, but-

Anita Moorjani 1:45:09 Wow

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:09 ... the point of bringing up that story is that when I'm, let's say, in the middle of a breath hold, and it's usually first thing in the morning as part of my morning routine, I'm just in my living room on, in my pajamas on the living room floor, there can be moments where you feel just this connectivity, this calm, this peace, and it's really, really nice.

Anita Moorjani 1:45:39 Oh, yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:39 And again, I'm not saying it's the same thing at all, just to be really clear. I'm just saying that is a way that I can often experience and remind myself that, you know, this, this heightened awareness of what actually-

Anita Moorjani 1:45:52 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:53 ... you know, what actually it means to be alive. You know?

Anita Moorjani 1:45:56 I love that. I love that you do that, and that you encourage it or talk about it, teach it, and these are exactly the things we, we need to do, the breathwork, the calm, the meditation, the... all of it. These are the, these are the ways we can do it without getting to the point of dying.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:15 Yeah. Where you can quieten things down so you can really start to hear.

Anita Moorjani 1:46:19 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:20 Right?

Anita Moorjani 1:46:21 And you can start to feel who you are and feel that you have a place in this universe-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:27 Yeah

Anita Moorjani 1:46:27 ... in this reality.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:30 Anita, I think I could talk to you for hours about this. Um-

Anita Moorjani 1:46:34 Me too. You've been brilliant. Like, really, I've loved your questions so much.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:40 Oh, I really appreciate that.

Anita Moorjani 1:46:41 Yeah, really.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:42 I think there's so much more in your book for people, Dying to Be Me.

Anita Moorjani 1:46:46 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:46 There's another book though as well, isn't there?

Anita Moorjani 1:46:47 Sensitive Is the New Strong. I've got a few books, but the ones I highly recommend people is Dying to Be Me as the first book that tells my story, and Sensitive Is the New Strong, and it really is about... It's for people who are sensitive, who are empaths, and it's about seeing that as a strength, not a weakness. When you feel everybody's emotions, very often people feel, "Oh, I'm too s- sensitive. I can't survive. I'll never make it." No, in fact, it's what we need in the world-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:16 Yeah

Anita Moorjani 1:47:16 ... people who are more feeling and sensitive and empathic.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:19 Oh, I love that. And of course, you're making more videos now on your YouTube channel to help-

Anita Moorjani 1:47:24 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:24 ... share this information, help people live better lives, which I think is amazing.

Anita Moorjani 1:47:28 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:29 To finish off this conversation, Anita, which I've thoroughly enjoyed and has been energy enhancing for me, I'm gonna walk out the studio with maybe double the energy I walked in with.

Anita Moorjani 1:47:42 Wow.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:42 Okay?

Anita Moorjani 1:47:43 That's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:43 So that was, that's... I think that's a nice thing to think about as we end this conversation. When you were talking about the currency of energy-

Anita Moorjani 1:47:52 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:54 ... and you presented two possible scenarios, the first scenario where someone was in a toxic relationship, they don't like their job, they don't have a reason to get up, and you contrasted it with a, a person who wakes up where they really love their partner and they love their job and it pays them enough to do what they wanna do in life. I wanna end on that thought, because there's gonna be people listening, Anita, who are in that first example.

Anita Moorjani 1:48:25 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:26 Right? There's gonna be people listening who go, "Anita, yeah, sure, if I had a partner who I really loved and I had a job that I loved and I made good money and I didn't have to worry about the bills, yeah, my life would be great. I'd have loads of energy." Right? And they might be pushing back and go, "You've got that now, great, but I don't have that. That's why my energy is low." What advice would you give to them?

Anita Moorjani 1:48:53 So I would say that that thinking, that mindset, and I know that is what people, uh, some people will say, so I'm so glad you brought that up, but that mindset, um, it comes with the assumption that we have to have that stuff first in order to build e- energy equity. It's the other way around. Remember where I was. I was dying on a hospital bed. I was gone. After coming out of the coma, I had to build up energy equity, and my life unfolded, and the way it is today... So even when I came out of the coma, I didn't have the energy equity right away. I didn't have a job. My husband had lost his job because he had been taking care of me. We had to move from our beautiful apartment and move down to a much smaller home in a really, um, not that great neighborhood because we couldn't afford it anymore, but I knew one thing. The one important thing was that my energy is more important than anything. So what I would say to people is even if you're in the job you don't like, you're not in a great relationship, or you're not in a relationship at all, find the things that you can do in your life that actually build up your energy. Look around with that mindset. If you have that mindset that my energy is the most important commodity, and right now I'm spending more energy than I physically have, so what can I do to feed my energy? And it could be anything from starting to switch up what you eat, eat foods that make you feel better about yourself. It can be doing things that help you to love yourself more. Literally anything that can give you a couple of extra energy points a day. Do something at lunchtime. As you build up that energy and the e- the deficit gets less and less, you'll actually notice your life starting to change. Even baby steps. But just build... It's like, exactly like money. Start saving a little bit at a time.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:08 Yeah, I love it. Anita, I've so enjoyed our conversation. You've had just the most incredible life experience. Thank you for sharing your message with the world, and thank you for coming onto the podcast.

Anita Moorjani 1:51:22 Wow. Thank you for, uh, for having me here and hosting me today, and thank you so much for this conversation and helping me share the message. I love it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:33 Me too.

Anita Moorjani 1:51:33 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:34 I absolutely loved that conversation. If you did too, I think you are really going to enjoy this powerful conversation about the life lessons people often learn too late.

Anita Moorjani 1:51:45 Start loving your life. Start loving yourself. The very essence of love is healing.