A context has a lifecycle that starts when a spawn...to operation occurs and ends when the last monitor instance in the context terminates. This is completely independent of any context objects that refer to the context. It is possible for a context to be running when no references to it exist, and it is possible for a context object to refer to a context that is no longer running. In the latter case, spawning to a context that is not running is permissible. The correlator restarts the context as required.