alt Hacker NewsHe also reinterpreted his experiences several times - and was open about it. Crumb gives a mostly Buddhist take, but PKD often gave far more Gnostic Christian takes on it (or surprisingly orthodox Christian ones)
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I have a copy of his Exegesis, and I can confirm, he reinterpreted the experience probably hundreds of times. He loved the gnostic interpretation (which is the main focus on VALIS). But also yeah, sometimes just straight up orthodox Christian ones. And he even fell back to interpreting it as just psychosis sometimes.
PKD also invokes Buddhism and Hinduism frequently in the Exegesis. Here's a quote I love from it:
> I have seen the infinities of Judaism, which is morality, of Christianity, which is love, of the Greeks, which is wisdom, and I have seen God’s power as pronoia and charis to rescue me by bending the world itself; but beauty is a perplexing infinity, raising more questions than it answers. It is a puzzle too intricate for me. It spans all else. As I sit across the game board from Krishna I say, “I have found in beauty that which I could not myself have made; thus I have found the benchmarks. I believe, for I have the evidence that I trust; it is sufficient.” There is an infinity of good, of love, of wisdom, of power, but each particular beautiful thing is infinitely beautiful, and there is an infinity of them, so beauty, alone, is an infinity of infinities: ∞2.
Here's a link to a video of PKD in Metz, France in 1977 where he reviews the material: https://youtu.be/P3TXfwGV8LQ?is=09XaeMgMDZaRChGT