[3] His works include paintings on canvas and paper,[4] 92 intaglio etchings based on Jungian psychology, assemblage, bronze sculpture, collage, and handmade art books.

[10] In Los Angeles, teenage Bowen's many visits to the mystical gatherings at Samson De Brier's house further solidified his early Asian philosophical studies.

As a lifelong student of the Bhagavad-Gita, Bowen's entire career has emulated the spiritual warrior archetype of Arjuna, fighting for the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution.

[citation needed] The Norwegian art patron and physician Reidar Wennesland[21] befriended Bowen and many of his bohemian artist friends and collected their artwork.

[22] Bowen's work now makes up the majority of the paintings in the Wennesland Foundation Collection[23] located in Kristiansand, Norway, alongside many other important North Beach artists, such as Jay DeFeo.

[citation needed] Michael Bowen, along with many of his artist friends moved to an old Abalone Factory in Princeton by the Sea, where they lived and painted for many months.

[28] In 1963, on one of Bowen's visits to be with his mentor in Tepoztlan, he was initiated into an ancient Aztec shamanic ceremony that inspired his future work with world consciousness transformation.

He often visited the two former Harvard professors Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, then Richard Alpert, in their mansion at Millbrook, New York, where a new variety of consciousness experimentations were being conducted.

[34] About 3,000 people attended the Love Pageant Rally, and towards the end, Ram Dass, Cohen, and Bowen discussed having another event, this time much bigger, to celebrate the newly developing hippie counterculture and consciousness expansion in San Francisco.

[37][38] He created the poster promoting the event,[39] organized the city permit,[40] invited the Beat Generation speakers, including Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Lenore Kandel, Michael McClure, and Timothy Leary, and scheduled the San Francisco rock bands, including The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, who played for free at the event.

The daisies, brought to the front lines of the tense confrontation by Bowen and others, were taken by the demonstrators and put into the nearest holder that symbolically communicated their anti-war sentiment.

[45] The iconic photograph "Flower Power", taken by photojournalist Bernie Boston, of the daisies being put into the bayoneted gun barrels of the soldiers by the unarmed anti-war demonstrators, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1968.

[47] In the early 1990s, Bowen found an abandoned cement traffic barrier in Golden Gate Park and claimed to have transformed it into a Shiva lingam.