A person who dies while rajas dominates — their mind still churning with unfinished plans and unsatisfied desires — is reborn among people who are similarly driven by action and attachment. They land in a life of ceaseless striving all over again.
And the one who departs under tamas, sunk in confusion and ignorance, takes birth in what Krishna calls "mudha yoni" — forms where awareness is even more limited, where the fog only thickens.
Taken together with the previous shloka, the message is straightforward. The mind's condition at the moment of death is not random. It reflects a lifetime of accumulated tendencies. A person who has spent decades cultivating sattva is unlikely to die in a tamasic state, just as someone who trains for a marathon is unlikely to be unfit on race day.