These distinctions were established through these personages because of the impossibility of equality, as I clarified in the first report.

THE THIRD CHAPTER

On the Knowledge of the Inner Meaning of Prayer (Bāṭin al-Ṣalāt) and Its Requisites. It contains eleven indications.

The First Indication: On the Inner Meaning of Purification (al-Ṭahāra)

Which is the first of the pillars of Prayer.

Know, O brother—may God purify you from the impurities of doubt—that Purification is the opposite of impurity in common usage. Purifying is the removal of outward impurity from the exterior of the body using pure water. The meaning of "pure water" in the legal convention is water that has not been mixed with anything that changes one of its three qualities: its taste, its color, or its smell, from the natural state in which it was found, whether flowing or still.