and in doing so , at this late date , from a shack abutting the abandoned ruins of boheme , he was compelled by a desire to understand a mystery not the way a scientist understands it , by cracking it open to see what makes it tick , but a desire to see it on its own terms , not the mystery of invulnerability - of the scientist observing and the object pinned by a needle and an antiseptic stare , but the mystery of vulnerability , to be saved from the mystery by becoming known by the mystery itself , to meet it on its own terms and live to tell .