Robert Bolman was born in 1956 in San Luis Obispo, California.
The product of an abusive childhood, Rob was poised to have a life of addiction and dysfunction when at 17 years of age, he had a couple of drug experiences causing him to become fascinated with human consciousness. Enjoying great popularity at the time, Rob learned Transcendental Meditation in 1973 and has meditated twice daily ever since.
Excelling in the arts since grammar school, Rob entered art school at 19 and attended two semesters before dropping out to pursue music. In 1980 Rob moved to San Francisco to participate in the emerging Punk Rock and Industrial Music scene. In 1983 Rob recorded an album of post-industrial doom & gloom trance music. Soon after that, in a state of artistic/spiritual crisis, Rob gave up music and began doing construction work. Rob’s spiritual crisis or descent into “the garbage within” peaked in 1992. Throughout the whole time, Rob’s twice daily meditation practice complimented various other personal growth practices so as to place the dysfunction resulting from his childhood firmly in the background and no longer a debilitating feature in his life.
While living in San Francisco in the mid 80’s Rob discovered Pacifica radio station KPFA and had his life profoundly changed by the political content therein. In 1988, Rob spent six weeks building houses in Nicaragua in support of the Nicaraguan Revolution. In 1991, Rob attended a journalist delegation to Cuba – the first one organized by Global Exchange.
Doing construction work since the middle 80’s, Rob always felt dissatisfaction at how mainstream construction is done. In 1991 Rob moved to Eugene and with his mother and bought the property that is now Maitreya EcoVillage. In 1992, Rob discovered the new field of Green Building and embraced it as a way to bring new meaning to his construction work. Rob became a founding member of the Eugene Chapter of the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild. Attending Straw Bale and Cob workshops in 1994 and an Earthship workshop and Natural Building Colloquium in 1995, Rob assembled a Green Building slideshow in 1995. In 1996, Rob started building a 600 square foot straw bale and earthen studio on his property in Eugene. In 2000, Rob set up a slide show tour and presented “Natural Building & Social Justice” 50 times from British Columbia through the southwestern US. In 2002 Rob completed a 3400 square foot Triplex using many environmentally innovative approaches to building. Later that year, the name Maitreya EcoVillage was selected to refer to a loving, nurturing, spiritually based community of people.
In the late 2000’s Rob attempted to become a comedian. Failing at that, he took the same exact material to the Eugene Poetry Slam where he has come in a first place twice.
Having been studying sustainability since the middle 90’s, Rob has developed a keen and rigorous analysis of that misunderstood concept. He now holds the view that Genuine, Meaningful Sustainability will be extremely difficult to achieve, but that the human family WILL achieve it having no choice in the matter and that much of the transition will be involuntary.
Having been meditating since the early 70’s, Rob brings a rigorous view of human consciousness and psychology to politics and economics, developing the acronym DAOS – Delusional and/or Sociopathic as a a more thorough and meaningful way to explain the moral & ethical shortcomings of those in power in the world.