204. "'So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, it shall come to pass that I vomit you out of My mouth.'" (3:16) This symbolizes their profanation and consequent separation from the Lord.

To be vomited out of My mouth means, symbolically, to be separated from the Lord, and to be separated from the Lord is consequently to be in neither heaven nor hell, but in a place apart, bereft of human life, surrounded by nothing but hallucinations. The reason is that they have mixed truths with falsities, and goods with evils, thus holy things with profane ones, to the point that these cannot be separated in them. And because a person cannot be prepared then to be in either heaven or hell, every bit of his rational life is eradicated, with only the lowest capacities of his life remaining, and when these have been separated from his life's interior capacities, they are nothing but hallucinations.

For more on the state and lot of such people, see Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Providence, nos. 226-228 231, which should suffice to give a concept of them.

They are said to be vomited out because after death everyone comes first into the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell, and is there prepared; and this world corresponds to the stomach, in which everything ingested is prepared, either to become blood and flesh or to become excrement and urine. The first have a correspondence with heaven, the latter with hell. But whatever is vomited out of the stomach is matter not separated, but mixed together.

Because of this correspondence we find vomiting out and vomit mentioned in the following passages:

(Drink and make drunk) that your uncircumcised foreskin may be exposed. The cup... of Jehovah will come around to you, so that a disgraceful vomit is upon your glory. (Habakkuk 2:15-16)

Make (Moab) drunk..., that (he) may applaud in his vomit... (Jeremiah 48:26)

...all tables are full of vomit thrown up... To whom will he teach knowledge? (Isaiah 28:8-9)

So, too, elsewhere, as in Jeremiah 25:27, Leviticus 18:24-25, 28.

The reason lukewarm water induces vomiting is owing also to the correspondence.

2418. 'Do not halt in all the plain' means he was not to linger over any one of these. This is clear from the meaning of 'a plain' as every aspect of doctrine, dealt with immediately below. What not lingering over any one of them entails will be stated at verse 26, where Lot's wife is referred to as looking back behind him. That 'a plain' in the Word means all aspects of that doctrine is clear in Jeremiah,

He who lays waste will come to every city, and no city will escape; and the valley will perish, and the plain will be destroyed. Jeremiah 48:8.

'City' stands for false doctrinal teaching, 'the plain' for all aspects of that doctrine. In John,

When the thousand years have come to an end Satan will be loosed from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. They went up therefore over the whole plain of the earth, and surrounded the camp of the saints; but fire came down from God out of heaven and consumed them. Revelation 20:7-9.

Here 'Gog and Magog' stands for people whose worship was external devoid of internal and so had become idolatrous, 1151. 'The plain of the earth' stands for the Church's matters of doctrine which they lay waste, 'the camp of the saints' for goods that flow from love and charity. 'Consumed by fire from God out of heaven' is similar in meaning to that regarding the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, in verse 24. Also in Jeremiah 33:13 matters of doctrine regarding charity are called 'cities of the mountain' and matters of doctrine regarding faith 'cities of the plain'.