Out-of-Body Level of Experience Scale: Construction and First Validation

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs), defined as the subjective sensation of having a personal identity separate from one's physical body, have captivated humanity across cultures and throughout history. While artificial induction techniques have provided valuable insights into the neural correlates of bodily self-consciousness, these artificially generated experiences often lack the perceptual and experiential characteristics of real OBEs. This study aimed to develop a practical tool for evaluating the phenomenological characteristics of OBEs, enabling the comparison of OBEs obtained through different methods. In collaboration with six advanced out-of-body experiencers (AdvOBErs), a 48-item scale was devised using the Delphi method, encompassing the perceptual, behavioral, experiential, and long-term effects of OBEs. The scores obtained from the AdvOBErs were compared with those obtained frpm 113 externally induced OBErs (EIOBErs) and 80 spontaneous out-of-body experiencers (SOBErs) retrieved from scientific papers. As expected, the mean of the OBE characteristics of AdvOBErs was approximately 10 times greater than the mean reported by EIOBErs and SOBErs, indicating many more opportunities to explore such a non-ordinary state of consciousness. In contrast, EIOBErs and SOBErs, usually with only one brief OBE, were only able to report the characteristic of feeling outside their body and, much less frequently, perceiving information beyond where their physical body was located. The Out-of-Body Level of Experience Scale represents a significant methodological advancement, paving the way for more rigorous and comparable research in the field.