What If This Is Heaven? — How Our Cultural Myths Prevent Us from Experiencing Heaven on Earth is Anita Moorjani's second book, published by Hay House in 2016 after the 2012 release of her near-death-experience memoir Dying to Be Me. The book is structured around ten cultural beliefs — about love, success, illness, family, religion, and gender — that Moorjani argues block the recognition of the unconditional ground she encountered during her 2006 NDE.
Each chapter pairs personal narrative with a contemplative reframe of the myth in question. The book is closer in genre to a self-help volume than to the memoir register of Dying to Be Me, and is the title Moorjani's organisation most often recommends as the follow-up read to that first book.
Contents
Myth: You Get What You Deserve
Myth: Loving Yourself Is Selfish
Myth: Real Love Means Anything Goes
Myth: I'm Not Okay, You're Not Okay
Myth: Health Care Cares for Our Health
Myth: It's Just a Coincidence
Myth: We Pay for Our Sins at Death
Myth: Spiritual People Don't Have Egos
Myth: Women Are the Weaker Sex
Myth: We Must Always Be Positive
Reception
What If This Is Heaven? reached the New York Times Advice / How-To bestseller list in February 2016 and has sold a reported figure in the high six digits across Hay House's English and translated editions. Within the NDE-research community (Bruce Greyson, Pim van Lommel, the IANDS conference circuit) the book has been received as a valuable bridge between the clinical NDE literature and the popular contemplative-spirituality market — IANDS made Moorjani a regular keynote after the book's release — while drawing critique for the genre-shift away from the first-person testimony of Dying to Be Me toward a more prescriptive self-help register. Critics outside the NDE community (the Skeptical Inquirer review, Sam Harris in a 2016 podcast aside) have argued that the book's framing of cultural beliefs as the central obstacle understates the structural factors that complicate the recommendations on offer. The book remains continuously in print and is the most-translated of Moorjani's titles after Dying to Be Me.
Frequently asked
What is What If This Is Heaven? about?
It is Anita Moorjani's second book — a structured examination of ten cultural beliefs she argues prevent people from accessing the unconditional ground she encountered during her 2006 near-death experience. Each chapter takes one belief (such as "loving yourself is selfish" or "we get what we deserve") and pairs a personal story with a contemplative reframe.
How does it differ from Dying to Be Me?
Dying to Be Me is a memoir — a first-person account of her lymphoma diagnosis, NDE, and remission. What If This Is Heaven? is closer to a self-help volume: it uses the NDE as a lens but is structured around cultural beliefs rather than personal narrative. Moorjani's organisation recommends it as the follow-up read to the first book.
Who is Anita Moorjani?
Anita Moorjani is a Hong Kong-raised author and speaker who documented her NDE — experienced while in a coma during end-stage Hodgkin's lymphoma in February 2006 — in the 2012 Hay House memoir Dying to Be Me. That book reached the New York Times bestseller list two weeks after publication and has circulated in over forty languages.