In general parlance, the word intuition is used for any — inherently true — knowledge that does not appear to be constructed on the basis of sense-impressions, but that comes to us direct, as if "ready-made". One can distinguish three types: knowledge about something or someone else, as if one knows it from the inside, knowledge of some general truth about how reality "works", and a direct knowing of the ultimate Reality itself, in its very essence. Sri Aurobindo describes these three as follows:
Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths.
— Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 981