Sachchidananda 'The Life Divine' Book I,Ch.9, 10, 11, 12 - Track 6

But how will you explain to the child, you had first said that it rains because there was cloud. Now he has an example, where there is a cloud but there is no rain. How will the child be explained? You will tell the child that look apart from the cloud something else also must exist before the rain comes, merely cloud does not mean rain. Something else also must happen; if that something else also happens then rain will come. Father decides in the home what would be the arrangement of income and expenditure. The child wants to buy a thing and child asks the mother, I want to buy this and the mother says that when the money will come, I will buy it for you. Money comes and you buy for the child, therefore child thinks that whenever money comes, things can be bought. A relationship is established between money and buying. Next time he wants to buy, there is money also and the mother says no – we won’t buy this. So child is puzzled and the child asks the mother, why? Then the mother says that father has decided that we have to buy a few things and not what you want. You get the permission of your father and you will get it. Father has made a rule that in this house this thing will not be bought. The child goes to the father and the father says, ‘I don’t want it. In my house this won’t be allowed’. Then the child argues and then he says, ‘alright have it’. The child concludes that apart from money something else is needed for getting the things that he wants to buy. What is something else? It is the father’s will. Is father’s will something which is rigid or is it flexible? In his experience he found that it is flexible. If you argue and argue the father will say, ‘alright have it’.  Next time, when the child wants to buy something, the mother says, ‘no, it can’t be bought’. Money is there but it can’t be bought and child will understand, he will be satisfied that mother is not able to buy because the father must have put some restrictions on it, so he tries the previous example – going to the father and persuading him to buy it and ultimately having it again. So he derives a conclusion, a logical conclusion, a law of logic. Money is not the cause of buying, if it is a cause, it is necessary. If a seed is a cause of a tree then the seed must produce the tree, therefore his conclusion is that money is not the cause of buying. Apart from money there must be a permission of the father and permission of the father is simply a free will of the father. Simply he has to take a decision, ‘yes or no’ and immediately the money will trigger and the thing will be bought and father’s will is free. Sometimes he persuades the father, sometimes he cannot persuade the father and father’s will is free. From this he derives a following law; a thing is possible depending upon another thing. Buying of X is possible if money is present, so this X is a possibility if money is present but money by itself is not sufficient to produce the buying. It’s a possibility but not a necessity. This possibility is produced from this object called money, if above that there is a will of the father, which is free is exercised then there is a pressure on this and the thing will be bought. So relationship between money and the object to be bought is not that of a cause and effect. Cause and effect is a relationship in which cause necessarily produces an effect.

The relationship is that of what is called reason. Money is the reason for buying a thing but not the cause of it. Why is it a reason? Reason is opposed to impossibility, improbability. When something is possible then that on which the possibility exists is called reason as opposed to improbability or impossibility. That reason triggers of the result only if a free will is exercised. Not only the reason should be present but there should be sufficiency applied to that reason. The decision of a father is a sufficiency imposed upon the reason which produces the result. Therefore Leibniz's called this law – ‘The Law of Sufficient Reason’ that the world consist of two kinds of events according to Leibniz, events which are necessarily caused by causes and events which are only possible depending upon the reasons which when they become sufficient then they produce the concerned events.

This was a great revolution in the thought of the world when Leibniz introduced this fourth law and he proved that this is true in this world. We gave the example of rain – even if the cloud is present it does not necessarily follow that there must be rain. There must be some other thing on the basis of which it becomes sufficient so as to produce a consequence. 

This law is also found to be present in the exposition that Sri Aurobindo has made the law of sufficient reason is also applied. There is farther point in the structure of the argument. We argued in the beginning that diamond is a diamond and a pearl is a pearl and we say it is necessarily true. Why is it necessarily true because in experience we find that where there is gold you can’t put black on it? The two are contradictory of each other. Therefore, we say it is necessarily be true that gold is not black and black is not gold. Diamond and pearl are opposite of each other. The same object cannot be both. It is a law; we say it is necessarily true that two motor cars cannot run on the same ground. It is necessarily so.  

All this is true as far as the physical world is concerned. The question is, − is it true also where physical reality is not in question? In the human mind two ideas, or five ideas or ten ideas can stand exactly at the same time. Two motor cars cannot move on the same ground that is physically true but in the mind plane that is not true. Ten ideas can run at the same time on the same terrain in the mind. So what is necessarily true in the physical plane is not necessarily true at the higher plane. Therefore, while you apply the laws of logic you must be very careful as to on what plane you are applying a particular law. Very often this is missed and many debates in the arguments arise because this fundamental point is missed.