204. Verse 16. Therefore because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit thee out of My mouth, signifies profanation and consequent separation from the Lord. "To vomit out of My mouth," signifies to be separated from the Lord, and to be so separated from the Lord is to be neither in heaven nor in hell, but in a place apart, deprived of human life, where there are mere phantasies. The reason is, because they have mixed truths with falsities, and goods with evils, thus holy things with profane, even so that they cannot be separated. And since man cannot then be prepared, either to be in heaven or in hell, the whole of his rational life is destroyed, and the ultimates of life alone remain, which, when separated from the interiors of life, are mere phantasies. Concerning their state and lot more may be seen in The Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Providence (n. 226-228, 231), which will suffice to give a knowledge of them. It is said of them that "they are vomited out," because the world of spirits, which is in the midst between heaven and hell, and into which every man first comes after death, and is there prepared, corresponds to the stomach, in which all the things put in are prepared either to become blood and flesh, or to become excrement and urine, the latter having a correspondence with hell, but the former with heaven. But the things that are vomited out of the stomach are those that have not been separated, but remain commixed. By reason of this correspondence, the expression "to vomit" and "vomit" are used in the following passages: