Imam Khomeini explains the matter in his theological works as following:
Do not spend your entire life with the introduction, so that you leave aside the conclusion. You are acquiring these sciences for the sake of a holy and high aim, knowing God and refining the self.
You should make plans to realize the results and effects of you work, and you should be serious about reaching your fundamental and basic goal. When you enter the seminary, before anything else, you should plan to reform yourselves.
While you are in the seminary, along with your studies, you should refine yourselves, so that when you leave the seminary and become the leader of a people in a city or district, they may profit from you, take advice from you, and reform themselves by means of your deeds and manners and your ethical virtues.
Try to reform and refine yourselves before you enter among the people. If now, while you are unencumbered, you do not reform yourselves, on the day when people come before you, you will not be able to reform yourselves, Imam further explained.
Many things ruin people and keep them from studying and purifying themselves, and one of them, for some, is this very beard and turban! When the turban becomes a bit large, and the beard gets long, if one has not refined oneself, this can hinder one’s studies, and restrict one.
It is difficult to trample the commanding self under one’s feet, and to sit at the feet of another for lessons.
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Imam Khomeini showed way of overpowering carnal self