CALL HIM A MAN, OR GOD OR AN INCARNATION, JUST AS YOU PLEASE - ACCEPT HIM EACH IN YOUR OWN LIGHT

Remember these few points:

1. We are Sannyasins, who have given up everything — Bhakti, and Mukti, and enjoyment, and all.

2. To do the highest good to the world, everyone down to the lowest — this is our vow. Welcome Mukti or hell, whichever comes of it.

3. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa came for the good of the world. Call him a man, or God, or an Incarnation, just as you please. Accept him each in your own light.

- Swami Vivekananda
1894.The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 6/Epistles - Second Series/XLV Brothers

SOME BODY GIVE US LIGHT - FOOLS; GOD MADE THE HEAVEN, AND MAN MADE THE HELL FOR HIMSELF

We put our hands before our eyes and cry: "Somebody give us light." Fools! Take your hands from your eyes! That is all there is to it.... We call upon the gods to save us and nobody blames himself. That is the pity of it. Why is there so much evil in society? What is it they say? Flesh and the devil and the woman. Why make these things [up]? Nobody asks you to make them [up]. "None, O Arjuna, can swerve from my path." We are fools, and our paths are foolish. We have to go through all this Mâyâ. God made the heaven, and man made the hell for himself.

- Swami Vivekananda
(Delivered in San Francisco, on May 29, 1900)
 The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 1/Lectures And Discourses/The Gita III