When we remain grounded in reality through consistent mystical practice, our consciousness opens up to spiritual perception.
It's not about seeing or hearing spirits, but about developing a natural spiritual sensitivity or sensibility – an additional ability of perception.
Even with your eyes closed, you will be able to sense who is passing by and whether they are good or bad people. You will become spiritually sensitive.
With this spiritual sensitivity, we begin to perceive new feelings and impressions.
We become aware of energies that were previously hidden from us - simply because we lacked the senses to perceive them.
On the mystical path, we always strive to remain grounded in physical reality.
It is not about imagining fantasies of God and love and artificially creating a feeling of love.
Such feelings can easily be evoked in the emotional mind, but that is not the goal of mysticism.
Mysticism seeks the reality of God - here and now, in this very moment, grounded in the physical body.
All great mystics - whether Buddhist or Christian, especially those in the Orthodox monasteries - anchored themselves in physical reality.
They too stepped out of the world of thoughts and fantasies produced by the mind.
From the perspective of the early Christian Fathers, the thoughts that arise during prayer are considered inspirations from the devil or demons - attempts to distract us from the path to God.