The main benefit of reading texts that are at a significantly higher level than what you currently have, is probably in the classroom.
When I was learning Chinese in Belgium, our teacher gave us Chinese newspaper texts after we had had only 260 classroom hours of Chinese. We could read at most 30 % of the characters in the text (and that is without counting the difficulty of which characters make up a word, since Chinese has no whitespace between words).
The reading exercise did not consist in trying to understand all of the text but to identify as many pieces of information as possible from the text. We did this while working together in pairs or in small groups. The teacher left the classroom while we were doing this; he had noticed that this group work functions best when no teacher is around. When the teacher returned, we discussed what we had found.
This type of exercise was also part of the exam: we were given a newspaper article and had to identify 10 pieces of information from the text (in our native language).
Text that are at a slightly higher level that where you currently are can be used for intensive reading. The higher level should mainly be a matter of vocabulary. (Grammar should not pose too many problems, unless that is the focus of the intensive reading.) I did this, for example, with a few French novels: I looked up (almost) every word that I did not understand and wrote it down in a notebook. After each chapter, I reviewed the words I had looked up. The first time, this was a long grind, but it improved my vocabulary a lot.
Text that are considerably more difficult than your current level are not appropriate for extensive reading or "reading for pleasure". Extensive reading requires text where you understand at least 90% of the words. According to Hu and Nation, "around 98% of coverage of vocabulary is needed for learners to gain unassisted comprehension of a fiction text" (Hu, Hsueh-chao Marcella; Nation, Paul: "Unknown Vocabulary Density and Reading Comprehension", Reading in a Foreign Language, 13.1 (2000); emphasis added).