Theolysis is the breaking moment at which the theogenic drive, at the individual level, loses its attachment to an object: an instant, not a process. Theolysis is not the same thing as leaving an institution: one person can experience theolysis while remaining inside the institution, while another can leave the institution and never experience theolysis at all (apoluthos).
At the societal scale, theolysis appears as a wave: thousands of individual moments accumulating across a population at scattered times (as in the Axial Age). What can be delayed is not the moment itself, but when it arrives.