In the Dreamtime of the Saucer People

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Abstract
This phenomenological analysis describes the author's encounter with the lifeworld of Unarius, an extraterrestrial contact group, which utilizes idiosyncratic procedures like dreams and past-life “memories” to verify what is real. The article explores the dialectic between immersion and objectivity as it impacts the ethnographer's experience of sense-making within a highly unusual socially constructed reality. The discussion centers on the recognition of interpretive boundaries between the researcher and group members as they both assign presumptive meanings to similarly experienced phenomena. Assessments of such boundaries occur when problematic events like discordant encounters with the member's meaning system lead the researcher to examine taken-for-granted interpretations.