There is a gentle sarcasm in it. The disciple has asked a question
“Why is it said that Krishna is an Overmind God?’
The disciple asking this question clearly misunderstood the below statement of Sri Aurobindo.
‘What Krishna worked for was the Overmind consciousness acting in the mind and vital.’The disciple mistook the work of Sri Krishna which was to open the Overmind consciousness for man as if Sri Krishna himself came from the Overmind and hence is an Overmind God like other gods.
Sri Aurobindo wants to make it clear that if that was the case (that is to say Sri Krishna was an Overmind god) then he couldn’t be an Avatara because all Avatars come from the Supreme. This, Sri Aurobindo is reminding him cannot be true since Sri Krishna declared himself to be the Avatara (in the Gita) and Sri Aurobindo has also confirmed the same in several places.
So he is explaining to the disciple that if Sri Krishna was just another Overmind god then how come Sri Aurobindo has called him an Avatara. He is pointing out that though Sri Krishna opened the possibility of the Overmind, he himself is not a god of the Overmind but the Avatara, the incarnation of the Divine. He gives the example of Sri Rama as well that though Sri Rama came to open the possibility of the Illumined Mind, he was indeed an Avatara, a descent or the Advent of the Divine.
The full letter is as below.
‘What was said2 was that Krishna as a manifestation on earth opened the possibility of the Overmind consciousness here to men and stood for that, as Rama was the incarnation in mental Man. If Krishna was an overmind “God”, that means he was not an Incarnation, not the Divine, but somebody else who claimed to be the Divine—i.e. he was a god who somehow thought he was God.’
Affectionately,
Alok Da
