Section 3 — Method, Sources, and Provenance

This section explains how the account of TFM given in this paper was produced. It covers what sources were used, how they were analyzed, how historical claims are classified, and how artificial-intelligence tools were used during the 2026 codification. Its purpose is to let a reader judge the strength of each historical and attributional claim made in later sections rather than accept those claims on the authority of their author.

The Nature of the Analysis

The methodology described in this paper was articulated through curriculum-based conceptual analysis. The analysis examined an existing body of facilitation teaching and practice in order to identify recurring principles, separate those principles from the practices through which they were taught, and state them in explicit form. [P] It is not empirical qualitative research. It did not use a sampling frame, a pre-registered coding protocol, or systematic data collection from participants, and it should not be read as meeting the standards of those methods. [P] Its conclusions concern what TFM teaches and proposes and how that teaching developed. They do not concern what TFM's practices do to participants (§2). [P]

Sources

The analysis drew on several categories of retained material. The dating and evidential weight of each are set out below, and the same limits apply wherever these sources are relied on in later sections.

Curriculum materials. These are the written training curriculum of the Transpersonal Facilitator Training Program (TFTP). [H-T] Some passages in the curriculum are dated. Others are not, and undated passages establish only that a teaching existed before the 2026 codification, not when it was first taught. [P]

The 2022 audiovisual archive. A surviving Vimeo archive contains audiovisual materials associated with the inaugural 2022 facilitator-training curriculum, together with upload and version metadata. [H-D] These materials are adjunct curricular materials: instructional videos associated with particular modules or topics, supplemental material, and interviews. They are not recordings of the live 2022 training sessions. [H-T] Where their content directly supports a claim, they are strong contemporaneous evidence of the 2022 curricular environment. [P] They are not a complete record of what was taught in 2022. The absence of a teaching from these materials is therefore not evidence that it was absent from the live training. [P]

Recordings of live TFTP teaching. The surviving recordings of live TFTP teaching sessions begin in 2023 and continue through subsequent cohorts. [H-D] [H-T] A recording of this kind can establish that a teaching was given by the date of the recording. It does not, without further evidence, establish that the same teaching was given in 2022. [P]

Dated documents. These include:

• 2022 calendar entries documenting the timing of the inaugural training [H-D];

• executed TFTP participation agreements dated May 2023, September 2024, May 2026, and September 2026 [H-D];

• a written Facilitator Certification Code of Ethics shown to have existed by November 24, 2025, although its original date of creation has not been established [H-D].

Founder testimony. This comprises Khalighi's retrospective accounts, given in a historical-development interview conducted on September 14, 2026, and in a September 2026 evidence-resolution interview. The existence and date of a retained testimony record are documented only where that record establishes them. [P] The substantive historical claims Khalighi supplies through retrospective testimony remain attested [H-T] unless independently supported by documentary evidence. [P] Where documentary evidence corroborates a particular proposition, that evidence may separately support the proposition in the documented register. The fact that an interview was recorded or dated does not raise the claims made in it to the documented register. [P] Founder testimony is legitimate historical evidence, particularly for tacit practitioner knowledge that no complete documentary record preserves. It is nonetheless retrospective, and it is identified as testimony wherever it is used. [P]

Records of the 2026 codification. These include the architecture freeze and its amendment, the historical development and attribution records, the evidence-resolution and provenance records, the scholarly source verification record, and the version-controlled manuscripts and revision specifications. [H-D] They establish the record of formulation and codification. They do not establish that any construct existed before 2026. [P]

Analytical Procedure

The analysis proceeded through six operations. They were not strictly sequential; each was revisited as later operations exposed errors in earlier ones. [H-D]

1. Curriculum-based conceptual analysis. The curriculum and associated materials were read as a whole to identify what the teaching presupposed and required, not only what it stated.

2. Cross-module thematic identification. Principles that recurred across modules and teaching contexts were identified and distinguished from content specific to a single module or practice.

3. Separation of architecture from repertoire. The recurring principles governing how practices are selected, sequenced, constrained, and completed were distinguished from the practices themselves (§§2, 7).

4. Lineage attribution. Each element was traced, as far as the evidence permits, to the traditions, teachers, or disciplines from which it derives. Precedents were compared against external scholarship (§§6, 15).

5. Historical dating. Each historical claim was assigned the earliest date the evidence supports and classified by the kind of evidence supporting it, using the conventions below.

6. Iterative critique. Successive drafts were subjected to critical audits and to adjudication of the issues those audits raised. These included separate AI-assisted critical audits conducted with different AI systems (cross-model AI-assisted critique).

The AI-assisted audits are not independent scholarly review. Review by a different AI system is distinct from review by independent human scholars. [P] Human external review, if and when it occurs, is reported separately from the AI-assisted audits. [P]

Provenance Taxonomy

Every element of TFM discussed in this paper is classified according to its provenance, using seven categories. [P]

• P0 — Inherited. A concept or practice originating outside TFM, in a tradition, teacher, or discipline.

• P1 — Khalighi adaptation. An inherited element that Khalighi modified in content, function, or placement.

• P2 — Documented TFM teaching. Taught in TFTP or earlier work and supported by dated documentary evidence.

• P3 — Attested TFM teaching. Taught, but supported by undated curriculum, founder testimony, or third-party testimony rather than by sufficient dated documentary evidence.

• P4 — Tacit TFM practice. Enacted in Khalighi's facilitation but not taught as an explicit principle; supported by testimony or observation.

• P5 — 2026 analytical formalization. A 2026 naming, diagramming, structuring, or formalization of P2–P4 content.

• P6 — New codification construct. Introduced during the 2026 codification with no identified pre-2026 antecedent.

Evidence Grades

The evidence supporting each historical claim is graded separately from its provenance category, using seven grades. [P]

• [D-R] — Dated recording evidence. The content is reported from a dated recording, with timestamp or description. Use at the level required for publication depends on a complete entry in Appendix A.

• [D-M] — Dated title or metadata evidence only. Establishes that a topic was addressed by that date, but not the internal content of the teaching.

• [U] — Undated curriculum content. Establishes that a teaching existed before the codification, but not when.

• [T] — Founder testimony. Khalighi's retrospective attestation.

• [W] — Third-party witness or attestation.

• [A] — 2026 analytical or codification product. Establishes the record of formulation or codification, not pre-2026 historical existence.

• [NEG] — Negative finding in specifically identified examined material. Establishes only that an item was not found in the material examined. It is never treated as evidence that the item was absent from the full historical record.

Registers, Status, and the Provenance Appendix

Historical statements in this paper are written in one of three registers that correspond to these categories. [P]

• Documented statements (P2) are phrased as what dated evidence shows.

• Attested statements (P3) are phrased as what Khalighi reports or what undated curriculum materials state.

• Formalized statements (P5 and P6) are phrased as formalized during the 2026 AI-assisted codification process and adopted by Khalighi.

No statement is written in a stronger register than its evidence supports. [P] Where a teaching is attested but cannot be dated, it is described as taught before 2026. [P] Where the paper reports that something was not found, it states that the item has not yet been located in the material examined, never that it was not taught. [P]

Documented claims carry one of two statuses. A claim is drafting-approved when the evidence has been identified but its full provenance entry has not yet been assembled. It is freeze-verified when Appendix A records the following for that claim: the identity and date of the source, with its version where relevant; its precise location, such as a page, clause, or timestamp; a short verbatim excerpt or, for an audiovisual source reviewed directly by the named checker, the specific proposition verified; the person who checked it; and the date checked. [P] A claim moves from the first status to the second only when its Appendix A entry is complete. A claim whose entry cannot be completed reverts to the attested register. [P]

Appendix A records the evidence entry for each documented claim, with the fields just listed, and the basis of each attested claim: founder testimony, including the founder attestations recorded there, or undated curriculum material, with its dating status. It also records the limitations that apply to the evidence and the records examined but not relied on. The codification history of each 2026 construct, including its earliest retained record and its proposer as recorded, is set out in Appendix B. [P]

Claim-Marker Convention

Substantive statements in this paper carry a bracketed marker identifying the kind of claim each statement makes. [P]

[S] — Source-supported claim. Supported by a cited scholarly or other external source listed in the References.

[P] — Proposition. A definition, proposal, analytical judgment, methodological rule, or scoping statement of this paper, offered for evaluation and not presented as an empirical finding.

[H-D] — Documented historical claim. Supported by dated documentary or recorded evidence; its evidentiary status is recorded in Appendix A.

[H-U] — Undated historical claim. Supported by curriculum material whose date has not been established. It establishes that a teaching existed before the 2026 codification, not when it was first taught.

[H-T] — Testimonial historical claim. Rests on testimony, principally Khalighi’s retrospective attestation, including the founder attestations recorded in Appendix A.

[Ph] — Philosophical claim. A philosophical, epistemological, or metaphysical position, stated by the paper or reported as held by Khalighi. It is neither an empirical finding nor a historical claim.

Where a statement combines claim types, it carries more than one marker, and each marker applies to the component it describes. These markers classify statements. They are distinct from the provenance categories P0–P6, which classify elements of TFM by origin, and from the evidence grades [D-R] to [NEG], which grade the evidence behind historical claims. In particular, the marker [P] is unrelated to the provenance categories P0–P6. [P]

Verification

Historical claims are classified by the type of evidence supporting them:

• a contemporaneous document or recording;

• a human-verified transcript or visual artifact;

• retrospective founder attestation;

• teacher or third-party attestation, where applicable;

• external scholarly or source verification. [P]

AI transcription and AI-assisted search were used to locate evidence. [H-D] Human verification is required for quoted, historically specific, or publication-critical claims. [P] Selected high-value passages in the audiovisual archive were verified by Khalighi through direct listening on September 17, 2026. [H-D] This paper does not claim that every source in the project record has been independently verified by a human reviewer. [P]

External sources were first checked in a dedicated source-verification pass, recorded in the TFM Scholarly Source Verification Record. That record documents which sources were checked and for which claims they may be cited. [H-D] Citations encountered during the controlled V0.2 revision were checked against their sources at section level before each section was accepted. Citations that could not be verified were marked as needing a citation rather than supplied from memory. No such marker remains in this version. [P] Neither process implies that every citation in the manuscript has been independently verified by a human reviewer. [P] Khalighi accepts responsibility for the final claims and citations. [P]

AI-Assisted Codification

The underlying facilitation methodology was developed and taught by Khalighi before 2026. [H-T] During the 2026 codification, AI-assisted analysis was used to examine, differentiate, organize, name, and formalize structures implicit in, and developed from, that prior body of teaching and practice. [H-D] The retained codification record does not preserve a sufficiently complete account of the AI tools' model versions and dates of use to report them reliably. [P]

The tasks for which AI tools were used were:

• literature discovery;

• source summarization;

• comparative analysis;

• structuring and diagramming;

• terminology proposals;

• drafting and editing, including drafting and revising the text of this paper and checking citations against their sources;

• separate AI-assisted critical audit and adjudication (cross-model AI-assisted adversarial review). [H-D]

The codification was an AI-assisted analytical process conducted with Khalighi. Khalighi supplied the curriculum, historical knowledge, experiential reasoning, founder testimony, and substantive methodological judgments. Analytical structures, terminology, comparisons, and formulations were iteratively proposed, challenged, revised, accepted, rejected, or modified. [H-D] Several contemporary constructs received their present formal expression during this process, including the architecture described in §7, the Live Facilitation Loop, Three-Domain Capacity, the Decision Framework, and the Fidelity Criteria. [H-D] Khalighi reviewed and adopted the frozen architecture. [H-T]

Appendix B, the Codification Log, records for each construct:

• its version history;

• its first appearance;

• its proposer, recorded as Khalighi, a collaborator, AI-assisted, mixed, or not reconstructable;

• the adoption decision and, where recorded, its date.

Earlier representations that were later superseded are recorded as superseded entries, including the seven-phase cycle and five-step loop of the first draft. [P] Where the surviving codification record does not establish who first proposed an exact term, sequence, or diagram, Appendix B records the proposer as not reconstructable, and this paper makes no individual first-proposer claim. [P] In those cases the text uses the formulation "formalized during the 2026 AI-assisted codification process and adopted by Khalighi as part of the contemporary TFM architecture." [P]

AI tools are not authors of this paper and are not originators of the underlying methodology. [P] Khalighi retains responsibility for the substantive methodological judgments, for the methodology, and for its published formulation. [P]

Retained Records

The retained records of the codification are the preserved evidentiary materials actually used in it. As applicable, these are:

• dated curriculum documents;

• the frozen architecture and its amendments;

• the historical development and attribution records;

• ethics documents and agreements;

• dated audio and video teaching materials and verified transcripts;

• founder attestations;

• teacher attestations where obtained;

• 2026 codification conversations and working documents;

• provenance records;

• scholarly verification records;

• the version-controlled manuscripts and revision specifications. [H-D]

This does not imply that every historical conversation or artifact was preserved. [P]

Limitations of the Evidence

The evidence base has six limitations. Each constrains the historical claims made in later sections.

Selective examination. The audiovisual materials were examined selectively rather than exhaustively. Targeted searches were made for specific teachings, and selected passages were verified. [H-D] A teaching not located in the material examined may still have been taught.

Nature of the 2022 archive. The surviving 2022 materials are adjunct curricular materials, not recordings of the live training. Documentation of live teaching begins in 2023. Claims about live 2022 teaching therefore rest on the adjunct materials where their content supports the claim, and otherwise on attestation. [P]

Version comparison. The April 2022 recording titled "Principles & Foundations" survives only in later versions, and its original version could not be accessed separately for comparison. Claims that depend specifically on the content of that original version are not freeze-verified on the strength of the later version alone. Where independent 2022 or 2023 evidence supports the same proposition, that evidence is preferred. [P]

Undated curriculum. Several curriculum passages are undated. They establish only that a teaching existed before 2026. [P]

Retrospective testimony. Founder testimony was given in 2026 about earlier periods. It is reported as testimony, is not treated as documentary proof, and is compared with the surviving documentary record wherever feasible. [P] No substantive contradiction between Khalighi's historical account and the surviving evidence has been identified. Differences in specificity are reported according to evidentiary status rather than reconciled. [H-D]

Unrecoverable proposers. The first proposer of some 2026 formulations cannot be reconstructed from the surviving record (Appendix B). [H-D]

Changed titles. The Principles & Foundations recording was originally titled "Module 3 — Principles & Foundations" and has since been retitled. [H-D] Recordings are therefore cited by date and title, and current module numbers are not projected backward. [P]

The author's roles in developing, teaching, and certifying TFM, and his associated financial and organizational interests, are disclosed in the Competing-Interests Statement in the front matter.