My Journey driven by K, from the neocortex toward the limbic brain
#toHIM #toME
NID is the place that changed my life and ‘K’ for Krishnesh is the person who changed my neural networks. Today I can communicate to people like Gregg Braden, Joe Dispenza, Anita Moorjani, James Doty and few others only because of that one man who made me realize how our brain works.
I felt weary and uninterested to celebrate 5th September because I had never encountered any teachers who taught me something new in my life other than my Parents. Always felt bad that I don’t know anyone whom I can remember as my favorite teacher. But this mindset changed after I met Krishnesh. The only teacher with whom I have taken a picture, that happiest moment during my convocation when I requested him to get clicked.
My intentions here are not to prove anyone’s greatness. I decided to speak because whatever has happened is not true and keeping the silence is also not right. Tagging a person with some hash tag, publicly announcing about a person without the accurate consult is really not ethical. Being a part of design space, we all should know how our biased, conditioned mind works. Before we say something about a person, we should ask ourselves, do we know the core story behind this or is it just a strategic play. I want to speak today because I want to stand with that person who has got me so much fame where I work, so much confidence wherever I go and so much belief in myself even if I plan to stay alone in life.
I want to highlight few things which he usually teaches his students which I’m assuming that it has led to this entire fake projection of Krishnesh. It is a common behavior for all of us to become judgmental, but I’m hoping that after reading this article, people can try to give a thought on were they correct with their actions which has just destroyed one person’s years of dedication and hard work.
1. When did I understand K: We always as a batch attended and loved to be present in his lectures. Initially, many of us did not even understand what is happening in the class. There were lot of repulsive energy and talks behind. We heard many other batchmates making fun of the contemporary classes being held. It literally took almost 1.5 years to understand what is he trying to teach us from so many months. I remember, we were having Service design module and people were presenting their ideas, he is not approving any of them. This made us think and think and that was the day when I felt the sight within me which changed my life. That day I understood, he was just trying to prime us, teach us the real DESIGN, the conscious thoughts which are needed within us to do something different as a designer.
2. What did K teach us: Due to his lectures I understood the difference between being conventional and unconventional with our thoughts and actions. K always forced us to think from the core/context. All of us who are reading this, willing to share this or who is judging this are all humans. Perspectives are various but at the end we are all humans. So, Krishnesh taught us to be a human first to become principled designer and to serve the society as a designer. We need to understand how all of us work. K’s basic questions were like who are humans, how does our brain work, how do we think, what defines our behaviors, the role of conditioned and biased minds and many more interesting ones.
Those interesting classes made me aware of how our energies gets stuck in the form of desires, guilt, fear, lack, victimization, ego, self-aggrandizement and competitional behavior in our brain in action. His inputs made me aware of those energy centers which are responsible for the flow of creative energy in the body. One of our energy centers is Inferior Mesenteric Plexus, which has to do with our identity, behavior and thought processes. A tremendous amount of creative energy exists in this first center. There are lot of books, published papers talks about this. Entire effort was to make us focus on the realm of unknown and make our brain work coherently to be in holistic state and feel more whole. It is really questionable and difficult to get to understand all of this in few months. This may not be entertained because it can question each and every individual’s associations.
Anyways, he talks from the perspective of neural influence on each of us. His intentions were to break our conditioned mind, our associations and biases to think about something unseen and feel the unfelt as a designer.
Our thoughts become matter after we marry our thoughts with the emotion of love or emotion of fear. Emotion of love is always in favor of our healthy life but the emotion of fear stops us from doing many things. His main intention was to make us realize the different emotions of fear in the form of stress, anxiety, lust, sadness and many more. These emotions are driving our lives which has totally made our senses biased. He wanted to deviate us to see the reality differently. He talks about love, physical body and several other topics to make us aware about our own body and break these biased neural networks and give justice to the work we do as a Designer.
He made me realize and work on my thought process to go beyond the analytical mind. It is not just to be a good designer, it helped me to focus or work towards activating my limbic brain which has lot to explore and experience myself as a human. Thanks a ton, Krishnesh.
3. What is K in my perspective: He always had a different approach to teach his students, very different than others. Known to break the conventional mindsets which pokes our thoughts, which offends many so-called creative beings. K wanted all of us to have patience to experience the real learnings. I have seen few of them completely go against him, who either feel jealous or who tags the lectures with a sarcastic laugh. None of this doesn’t really matter to Krishnesh because I have never seen him planning to gain any assets in life.
I proudly tell everyone that I’m from NID because our approach and the way we think is always distinct and more towards bringing contemporary meaning to our deliverables. And, it was a shock to hear about all the allegations against Krishnesh. Design schools like NID need more faculties who can teach you the science part of design and take you to the core of every questions and problems. It is very unfortunate for the future NID students who deserves this knowledge will lose an opportunity to learn under him. NID will lose someone who is doing a lot from future perspective, who is bringing different value to the society. There are many foreign universities who are driving in this school of thoughts. We call ourselves very broad minded but cannot accept someone who talks about it on our face. NID is known for its different colors. This chapter is one among them. I fear now if we act conventionally and strategically for whatever reasons then I would think twice to say others that I’m from NID.
It is very surprising to know about the decisions taken by the Institute against him. Before I had joined NID, many alumni had told me that the Institute has lost its core teaching skills. Many great teachers have left or shifted to different colleges. It was a sad truth which I experienced when I was a student at NID. But, fortunately Krishnesh was my coordinator and it made me experience the raw design languages, learn design from root level thinking than just designing something tangible.
One of the major tools which works in the industry is the communication and presentation skills to sell ideas, businesses and yourself. K is the only person I have seen who had asked us to use our skills like painting, dancing, singing, drama etc. to present our learnings during jury. K provided us with many opportunities which has given me a lot of confidence to stand even though I lack material. We need to realize where we stand, why we stand and how to stand. This entire scene reminds me of those frogs which tries to pull the one who is very different from the rest, who walks independently and doesn’t fit the norms.
Let us keep this Design space pure, let us worship it and not use it for our personal benefits.
We have a great, powerful space to bring lot of changes in India. We need to think before we act because Design thinking is our proprietary behavior.