Up to now they have counted at least two million galaxies. Our sun, our moon, our earth, all the planets, and all the stars that you see with your bare eyes, are one galaxy. This sun is the center of this solar system. Everything is moving around the sun. The sun is the center of one solar system. At least two million galaxies have been discovered. Many more are there – one can be certain about it, because we have not come to the end of the world, and we are not going to come to the end. The mind cannot conceive of it. The mind always thinks somewhere there must be an end.
When Columbus was trying, persuading people…because nobody was going with him; there was nobody ready. It was one crazy queen of Spain who said, “I will give the money. You try.” It was not a problem for her. Money was simple for her and she was known for crazy things, and this idea struck her: “It is perfectly good. If you are lost, you are lost; you are asking for it yourself. I will pay for the trip, but you find the men.”
He needed at least ninety people to go with him to take care of the ship, food, everything, because he estimated it would take at least three months to come back home. To make a round trip and come back home would take at least three months; that was his calculation, which was proved wrong. But because the queen was helping, a few daring people, courageous people, started to be ready to go with him. And one day, with ninety people he started.
The pope sent him the last warning: “I tell you, don’t do such a stupid thing. You will repent forever, because it says in the Bible the earth is flat, so one day you will come to the very end of the earth and your ship will go down. From the very edge of the earth, where will you go? You will fall into eternal hell! There is bound to be an end, you cannot go on for ever and ever. And the earth is flat, so there is an edge and you are going to fall off, and with you these ninety fools who are going – they are going to fall. I am giving you the last warning: don’t go against God!”
But Copernicus, Columbus, Galileo – these people were not gullible. They were not the mediocre masses which the priest could exploit. Columbus said, “I am going. It is better to fall from the edge – but at least I will see with my own eyes the edge of the earth, the flatness of the earth. And I will see what happens after the fall – where we end up, whether we land anywhere or we go on falling. We will see.”
But as days started passing…weeks, months…the ninety people who were with him started becoming afraid. Only three days more and their rations would be finished. They had traveled two months, twenty-seven days, and he had promised that in three months they would be back home. There seemed to be no sign anywhere…. They all gathered in the night when Columbus was sleeping, to kill him, and go back – because alive he was not going to go back. He was not a man to go back; he would rather fall into the eternal ditch. He was not the man to go back – even to say anything about it was impossible.