The Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran

╭ chapter eight
life departs: and when life departs, all other vital forces
depart after it. He is conscious, and with consciousness he
leaves the body. Then his knowledge and his works and his
previous impressions go along with him. (Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad iv.4.1–2)
First consciousness is withdrawn from the senses. The
dying no longer hear or see what is going on around them.
They are still conscious, but the “light” of consciousness has
been withdrawn from the senses, here called the “gates” of
the body. There are said to be nine such gates: two eyes, two
nostrils, two ears, the mouth, and the organs of generation
and excretion. Sometimes two more are added: the navel and
the sagittal suture, located at the top of the skull and called in
Sanskrit brahmarandhra, “the aperture of Brahman.”
When consciousness has been withdrawn from these gates,
Krishna says, “the mind is placed [“locked up”] in the heart.”
(8:12) Here, as in Christian mysticism, it is the heart and not
the head that is taken to be the home of the soul. Probably
what is meant is the heart chakra, the center of consciousness
corresponding to the center of the chest. Prana (vital energy)
and awareness have been withdrawn from the outer frontiers
of personality and consolidated within. At this stage of the
death process an ordinary person has no access to the will; but
it is just here that prana, with conscious awareness, must be
made to move upwards to the head. If prana leaves the body
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