To quote a renown yogi, "mysticism starts where mastery ends." Apart from calmness and concentration, a significant benefit provided by such practices is

To quote a renown yogi, "mysticism starts where mastery ends." Apart from calmness and concentration, a significant benefit provided by such practices is emotion control, meaning you can choose the emotion you want to experience. Not only stimulus and reaction decouple, but you conciously produce stimulus, and choose reactions to foreign stimuli. This concept of real choice is hard to imagine for those who haven't experienced it.