"internal family systems" gives a useful framework for this ability of the brain to take on multiple more or less independent perspectives, almost personalities. our brain can hide different memories in them and getting free access and interaction and integration of them is seen as part of personal development by the IFS approach to the phenomenon. They leverage it without psychedelics, btw.
Yeah I think empathy under the hood is just a very good modeling engine that models other people's brains without our conscious awareness.
IFS, DMT, and other experiences can surface those models to the conscious layer and allow us to introspect them more directly.
In that vein I think sympathy is our intelligent/conscious level modeling of other people's emotional states, which is a higher level process that happens with conscious awareness. In some ways I think sympathy is actually harder, and I respect it more because it shows conscious effort put into modeling experiences you haven't already had / can't intuitively relate to without effort.
