The reason meditation is such an effective tool is that it removes the ego, the sense of “I.” Our subconscious is an extremely powerful pattern recognition machine. There’s a psych experiment, for example, where they gave two groups a stack of weather maps; one group they taught the rudiments of meteorology and had them work out what the weather was the next day, while a second group was simply told to look at the maps and guess. The second group was significantly more accurate than the first. The machinery of the subconscious mind is tremendously better at detecting patterns that your conscious mind.
If you want to improve your sensory perception, then, the secret is to stop thinking. Allow your unconscious to absorb the details and then use your intuition to guess. There’s a phenomenon called blindsight in which people who are completely blind are able nonetheless to accurately “guess” what objects are being held in front of their eyes because even though they can’t consciously perceive it, their unconscious is still seeing and processing information. You, too, can benefit from this same phenomenon — and with all the senses.