Viśvanātha gives almost exactly Jīva's two-step gloss — with one telling word-change. Manana of the bond is focused contemplation, as before. But the āropaṇa, the transfer onto oneself, he glosses as abheda-manana — "thinking oneself non-different" from that role. Where Jīva said abhimanana (self-conceiving), Viśvanātha writes abheda-manana. This word choice is what his following remarks will carefully qualify.

Viśvanātha, like Jīva, marks the next verse-phrase for comment by quoting its first word: "vrajendra-..."

Same essential limit as Jīva draws. Following Nanda's mood does not mean thinking "I am Nanda." You do not identify yourself as Vrajendra himself. (Note Viśvanātha writes vrajendra-tva, "the very state of being Nanda," where Jīva wrote vrajendrāditva.)

Word-for-word as Jīva: the thought "I am Kṛṣṇa's father" can come about in two ways. First, svatantratvena — taking the role as your own independent self. Second, abheda-bhāvanā — feeling yourself to be one with his real father Nanda. One of these is about to be rejected.

As with Jīva: of the two ways, the second — feeling non-different from Nanda — is improper. The first, taking the role as one's own perfected self, stands.

The reason, compressed here (Viśvanātha drops Jīva's clause about their being shown eternal): toward those associates, merging is unfitting — exactly as it is wrong to worship God by thinking "I am God." Just as you never dissolve yourself into Bhagavān, you never dissolve yourself into Nanda.

Viśvanātha spells out the cost concretely for the friendship mood. If, in sakhya-bhakti, you approach Subala and the other cowherd friends by merging into them, the result you would reach is sāyujya — dissolution, becoming one with him. And sāyujya is precisely the impersonal merger that a devotee does not want. So the merging-approach defeats the whole aim of loving devotion.

Viśvanātha anticipates a counter: "but ahaṅgraha-upāsanā — worship in which you grip the ego and meditate 'I am the deity' — is an accepted method." He grants that such a method exists. Even so, he says, the specific form "I am Vrajendra, I am Nanda" leads to nothing but hell. Understand it that way. Granting the general practice does not license this application of it.

Here is why "I am Nanda" is so damaging. If you think you are Nanda, then Yaśodā, the queen of Vraja, becomes your wife — and so on down the line. That worship forces contradictory, improper relationships (viruddha-bhāvanā) toward Kṛṣṇa's other eternal associates. That is exactly why it is hellish: it does not deepen love, it corrupts the whole web of relationships in Vraja.

Viśvanātha glosses the verse's "bhakti" as sevā, service, and states who does it and how: practitioners are to perform it in two forms — with the sādhaka-rūpa, the present practicing body, and with the siddha-rūpa, the perfected inner body. He is setting up the crucial division of labor between these two bodies that his next lines enforce.

Viśvanātha grounds his two-body reading in an established authority. There is a settled maxim — "here service is indeed to be done by the practitioner-form and by the perfected-form." He notes that the same explanation applies right here. So his division into sādhaka-rūpa and siddha-rūpa is not his invention; it is the standard teaching applied to this verse.

Now the pivotal distinction. When the verse says "do service after the manner of the feeling and conduct of Nanda, Subala, and the rest," which body does the copying? Viśvanātha rules: only the siddha-deha, the perfected inner body, renders that service — and it is mānasī sevā, mental service. It is NOT the case that the practitioner, with his present sādhaka body, physically imitates Subala's feelings and gestures. Modeling on Subala's bhāva and ceṣṭita belongs to the inner, meditative body, not the outer one.

Here is why the sādhaka body must NOT simply copy Subala. Subala, an eternal Vraja associate, never took shelter of a guru's feet, never offered daṇḍavat obeisances, never observed Ekādaśī — he had no need to. But if a practitioner, imitating Subala, also dropped these practices, he would commit offenses against his guru and others, and the consequence would be that he goes to hell. So the outer sādhaka body keeps performing the ordinary disciplines; only the inner siddha body copies Subala's mood. This is the reason behind the previous line's ruling.

Viśvanātha clinches it with the author's own words. Rūpa Gosvāmī himself wrote, earlier in this very work, "a fault arises from [neglecting] the performance of the limbs of bhakti." By that statement, says Viśvanātha, Rūpa has already declared that leaving undone the obligatory limbs — Ekādaśī and the rest — is a fault. So the requirement to keep performing them, even for a rāgānugā practitioner, comes from the author himself.

Viśvanātha concludes on a practical, encouraging note. Since the model to be followed is meant for mental service in the perfected body, where does one find that model? The inner feeling and outward conduct of Nanda, Subala, and the rest is fully and famously available in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. So the practitioner has a ready, authoritative source from which to learn the bhāva and ceṣṭita to meditate on.