Viśvanātha first pins down 'anurāga.' Here it is not anurāga the fixed emotion — the high sthāyi-bhāva; that kind cannot arise in a practitioner's body. It means the sheer intensity of rāgānugā worship. Then he glosses 'the ancient ones': they are the gopīs who reached perfection in Kṛṣṇa's appearances in earlier and earlier kalpas.

Or, said the other way round: the ancient ones are not those who got their perfection only in this present kalpa's Kṛṣṇa-avatāra. Their perfection reaches back before it.

Now he takes up the verse's phrase 'ciram āgatāḥ' — 'arrived long ago.'

Measuring back from this kalpa's avatāra, they were already perfected in the earlier kalpas. They carry on into the present kalpa, and they will carry on into future kalpas as well — appearing through wombs of mortals, immortals, and so on.

That is, they take a fresh birth — as a human, a god, a gandharva, and so on. That is the sense of 'from wombs of mortals, immortals, and the rest.'

Or else, read the two words as naming who they are: 'mortals' are the human-born gopīs, and 'immortals' are gopīs like Hiraṇyā and the others.

He backs the name 'Hiraṇyā' with the Bṛhad-gaṇoddeśa-dīpikā: 'golden-limbed, Hari-colored, born from a doe's womb.'

Some teachers say this same split — ancient and new — holds for the yauthikī gopīs too, the ones who do belong to a group, not just for the unaligned ones.

Their ground: in a future Rāma-avatāra the Daṇḍaka-forest sages — the ones famed for beholding Rāma's beauty, worshippers of Gopāla — must inevitably appear. So there will be 'new' ones even among grouped devotees.

One might object: 'Why say new ones? The very sages of this kalpa's Rāma-līlā could simply show up again in a future Rāma-avatāra.' That objection does not hold —

— because in this same kalpa's Kṛṣṇa-avatāra those sages already became gopīs, so they are perfected. And the perfected cannot go back to being practitioners waiting for a Rāma-līlā. So the future ones must be new sages.

Another objection: 'Then just say no such new sages arise at all.' That too does not hold —

— because in a future Kṛṣṇa-avatāra, when the rāsa begins, there must again be gopīs shut inside their houses who give up their bodies out of separation from Kṛṣṇa. Such gopīs keep occurring, so new ones are needed.

'Then who will those body-abandoning gopīs be? Surely just the sages-turned-gopīs of this present kalpa.' If you say that — no.

— because those sage-gopīs already have perfected bodies, and a perfected body cannot be given up again. So the dying gopīs must be new, unperfected ones.

'But Yogamāyā alone stages the death — she just makes it look as if they quit their bodies.' If you say that — no.

— because that would spread the ugly rumor 'even the perfected gopīs died.' Such a report is repugnant, and it would be unfitting to stage things that way. So the dying gopīs are genuinely new ones, not the perfected.

So here is the upshot. Because the practicing devotees are endless in number —

— in every kalpa those sages are a fresh set, different ones each time.

Those fresh sages become, in the Kṛṣṇa-avatāra, the new gopīs. And it is some of these that, shut inside their houses, give up their bodies. That is the picture the 'some' hold.

The same goes for the śruti-gopīs. The Upaniṣads too are endless, so in each kalpa a different set of them does the practice and reaches perfection. So there as well you get the twofold split — ancient and new. That closes the view of the 'some.'

But others refuse the group-gopīs any such split. They say instead: in a future Kṛṣṇa-avatāra it is only certain unaligned gopīs — ones of the perfected kind — who, purely by the power of līlā, will be shut indoors and give up their bodies. This second opinion is left standing beside the first.

Now a question. Today's rāgānugā practitioners climb the rungs — niṣṭhā, ruci, āsakti, and on — and suppose in some birth prema finally awakens in them. They are now fit for Kṛṣṇa's direct service. So which is it? Do they reach the rank of His associates the very moment that body dies, in the Vṛndāvana beyond this world? Or only when a Kṛṣṇa-avatāra appears here in the material world?

The answer: prema's higher ripenings — sneha, māna, praṇaya, and the rest — cannot show up in a practitioner's body at all. They come only in a gopī body, and only there by the glory of keeping company with the ever-perfect gopīs who hold mahā-bhāva — by seeing them, hearing of them, remembering them, singing their qualities. Given that, these emotions are bound to arise. So the practitioner must first get a gopī body among those gopīs.

For those very emotions are what set a gopī apart — her one distinguishing mark. Take them away and gopī-hood simply does not hold. So one must have the gopī body in which alone they can grow.

As scripture says —

For the gopīs there was the highest joy in seeing Govinda — the gopīs for whom, parted from Him, a single moment stretched out like a hundred ages.

Its meaning: 'But who really are the gopīs?' The verse answers by their mark — those for whom a moment without Kṛṣṇa felt like a hundred ages, they are the gopīs. And the highest joy is for them alone.

And the line 'an instant turns into an age' fits here too. A moment stretching out into a hundred ages — that swelling of time is the very mark of mahā-bhāva.

So here is the answer to the question. The world-perceptible Vṛndāvana — the one that shows in this world during the līlā — is known to be for the perfected only: no sādhaka or worldly person is ever seen to enter it, only siddhas are. And the emotions sneha and the rest do not ripen fast even by one's own practice. Therefore the bhaktas in whom prema has been matured by Yogamāyā enter the transcendent Vṛndāvana, at the time of Kṛṣṇa's avatāra, so as to reach it first.

As for that transcendent manifestation: there sādhakas, worldly people of every sort from karmīs onward, and the perfected are all seen to enter — so it is boundless, a domain shared by sādhaka and siddha alike. There the bhakta is born, and even before any bodily contact with Kṛṣṇa, the birth is for the sake of ripening the various bhāvas.

Now another question. Between one avatāra and the next lies an enormous, all-but-endless stretch of time. Where are these fiercely longing bhaktas supposed to wait it out?

The answer:

There is not even a trace of waiting — because the universes are endless in number.

Since the manifest līlā is going on somewhere without a break, the moment a bhakta's body ends he is born — right then, in that very Vṛndāvana, in the form of a gopī. No gap, no wait.

With this qualification: they are born in gopī form precisely in whichever universes have the Vṛndāvana-līlā manifest at that moment — not just anywhere.

Now the step-by-step order of how it happens:

First step. Take a devotee firmly set on right rāgānugā practice, in whom prema has now arisen, who has long carried a burning wish for direct service — even if he has not yet reached the higher grades of prema like sneha. Out of mercy the Lord grants him, at least once, a vision of Himself surrounded by His associates — a vision that lets him taste the service he longs for. It may come while he is still in his practitioner's body, in a dream, or even face to face.

Second step. Then, just as it was given to Śrī Nārada, the Lord gives him a body too — a body made of consciousness and joy, shaped as a gopī, and steeped through with the gopī mood.

Third step. Finally, when Vṛndāvana is manifest and Kṛṣṇa's associates are appearing, that same given body is brought forth by Yogamāyā from a gopī's womb — on the principle already laid down, so that the grades of prema like sneha can be brought to full ripeness. This is why the new gopīs are 'born from wombs.'

A further point. Kṛṣṇa's play is a human-like play. And it is well established that he plays with gopīs who are themselves of human birth.

And that real human-ness could not stand if the gopīs were born from no womb at all. For just this reason: even though it is granted that Lakṣmī becomes a gopī, it is not granted that she is born from a gopī's womb or sanctioned by the gopī community. So the truth to be grasped is that Kṛṣṇa's play with her stands only in that limited sense — unlike his play with the true, womb-born gopīs of Vraja.