Did the Indian rishis gain knowledge through meditation?

I keep wondering about this question since long.
My feeling is, in Vedic tradition, human beings are not the ‘crown of the creation’ as in the Abrahamic religions. There are other conscious, intelligent beings apart from humans. The Saptarishis (seven sages) for example are in my view not humans as we are.

My feeling is, a lot of the Vedic knowledge was GIVEN. It is not possible for humans to come to the conclusions of Surya Sidhanta for example. Mapping of the sky is not possible merely by observation.
Even the Upanishadic realisation that this ‘reality’ is Maya, a temporary appearance on the eternal truth (Brahman), and doing a clear analysis of Maya, including the 5 elements, is not easy to discover for humans who were supposed to be primitive thousands of years ago.

The usual explanation is: they saw it in deep meditation. But it is unlikely. In deep meditation one may experience an oceanic oneness with all, but it’s unlikely to get inputs about certain constellations in the sky.

Let’s take Ramanujan Srinivasan. He says, Devi Namagiri gave him the mathematical formulas in dream. Should we not consider the Devi as real as we humans are, though not visible to our human set of senses?

Patanjali, who gave the ashtanga Yoga, was supposedly a Naga.

Hindus have so much information about different beings especially in the Puranas, yet it almost seems, as if westerners nowadays take invisible spiritual forces – positive and negative ones – more seriously and for more real than Hindus.

The reason may be that especially Hindus are very focused on education. And education considers these invisible powers just as figments of imagination and to believe in them as ridiculous. Yet by now we should know that education has an agenda. And it is NOT to make us find the truth and make us free and happy by realising who we really are.

Devas and Asuras are more powerful and long lived than humans. They play their part in Maya depending on their gunas (Devas sattvic (pure), Asuras rajasic (egoistic) and Rakshasas tamasic). Humans have the advantage that they can discover their oneness with Brahman by choosing sattva and then transcending the gunas.